Re: Appearance Capplet Ideas

[Jens Granseuer <jensgr gmx net>]

On 06.04.2007 19:20, Thomas Wood wrote:
> On 04/04/07 17:06, Jens Granseuer wrote:
> > * "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).
> 
> I think this is actually a symptom of knowing the old theme capplet too 
> well. Once you realise what was going on, was it still so confusing?

I wouldn't say it was confusing as such, but it would be nice if the
relationship could be made a bit more obvious. I'd say your new
mockup with the hint text completely removed made matters a little worse
in that respect.

> > * "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.
> 
> I've put the cursors combo box into the mockups, and shown the "colours 
> not supported" message. I don't think it's too cramped yet.

Agreed.

> > * we seem to be a little inconsistent regarding images in buttons
> 
> Interesting one, especially as this is also a GTK+ style option. Stock 
> buttons always use icons, but other buttons don't have to. I can see two 
> possible policies here. We either insist on icons in all buttons, or we 
> decide only stock buttons should have icons. Either way, the user should 
> be able to disable all icons in buttons by using the GTK+ option.

Is it possible to disable non-stock images in buttons when using glade?
There's still a bug open about that [1].

> >> 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).
> 
> I mostly agree here. The use of "Advanced..." buttons leads to excessive 
> windows (such as those present in the Windows appearance settings). 
> Let's make sure the settings are really important to include at all 
> before just relegating them to an extra window.

While I agree that the fewer windows the better, my main point here
was that if we need those buttons they shouldn't be labelled
"Advanced..." in any case.

> >> 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 going to suggest icon sized previews in the combobox. As you can see 
> I've filled it with a stock icon at the moment, but at least it gives 
> some idea overall impression.

Hm, your new mockup has an icon preview for all theme types. For
mouse cursor, that's probably a good idea, but is it possible to
show a meaningful thumb-sized preview for GTK+/metacity/icon themes?
I doubt that.

Jens

[1] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=362880