Re: Appearance Capplet Ideas

[Jens Granseuer <jensgr gmx net>]

On 04.04.2007 00:44, Thomas Wood wrote:
> Various people have suggested an all-in-one appearance capplet might be 
> a good idea to try and reduce our proliferation of these settings over 
> many different windows. Unfortunately, no one has so far come up with 
> any good mockups (other than "let's cram all the current capplets into 
> tabs"). So, I put together a glade file organising our existing options 
> into the following categories:

I like that. Still got a couple of points in addition to what Rodrigo
and Denis already mentioned, though:

* "Themes": when I looked at this tab for the first time I desperately
  went looking for the button that let me customize stuff. That it's over
  in the "Appearance" tab is rather non-obvious. At the very least
  "appearence" should be capitalized in the hint (but "Appearance isn't
  a good name anyway, as the others have pointed out).

* "Appearance": what would this look like for themes which don't support
  custom colours? Might get a bit crowded, especially if cursors move
  there as well.

* "Desktop": should not have "Desktop" in the category titles; should
  probably also change "Desktop Colors" to "Background" or so

* we seem to be a little inconsistent regarding images in buttons

* somebody couldn't decide between BE and AE spelling... ;-)

* your mockups drop the "Close" button, which means windows will have
  to be closed using the window decoration; iirc there was an
  argument some time ago that this isn't ideal for
  usability/discoverability reasons (Calum?). It does save us some
  space, though...

> A few of the screens could do with cleaning up and simplifying (Fonts 
> for example). What are people's opinions on "Advanced" buttons so that 
> we can keep the main tabs clean and simple?

I seriously detest "Advanced..." buttons. You can never tell what
lies beyond (and in most cases it doesn't have much to do with advanced)
so you'll have to take a look anyway. If we managed to come up with
reasonably telling labels, though, that wouldn't be much
of a problem (to me).

> The other things that are missing from the current layout are cursor 
> settings (themes), and also any link to sound themes for the Themes tab. 
> Perhaps cursor themes should be added to the Appearance category, 
> underneath icons.

One problem I can see with that is that we'll lose the preview.
It could maybe be put behind a "Preview" button in a separate window,
but in that case I'm not sure a combobox would work well here.

> I'm not sure how any link to sounds for the Themes 
> page should work.

IMO sound doesn't belong in the appearance capplet.

Jens