Re: Appearance Capplet Ideas

[Thomas Wood <thos gnome org>]

On 8 Apr 2007, at 12:45, Jens Granseuer wrote:

> 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.

Well, I'm not a fan of help text on the dialog anyway, since after the 
first time you've read it, it become redundant.

Maybe Denis' suggestion about putting a few controls for themes above 
the notebooks makes sense?

[...]
> > > * 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].

I think there is a glade bug about this too. There is a special GTK+ 
function to let GTK+ know that you're adding an icon and text to a 
button.

> > > > 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.

"Extra options" ? The button in the Font settings is called "Details". 
Not sure if that makes more or less sense.

> > > > 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.

It should be fairly simple. For example, the current preview already 
just shows a button to demonstrate the GTK+ theme. A small button and 
checkbox might be enough to give a feel for the style and colours. It 
all depends on how small the result is, and whether or not it is scaled 
down. Icon themes would be very easy, but metacity themes probably a 
little more tricky to get something meaningful. We don't have 
individual previews for these elements at the moment, so it's probably 
not critical if it doesn't work out. No harm in trying though!

-Thomas