Re: GtkColorPickerButton

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Hi,

Just went and looked at OS X and from that we can add a third option
to consider. This is what OS X uses for changing the color of an
object in a prefs dialog, analagous to changing gnome-panel color.

It is in an option menu like this:

(In the ASCII art, XXXX means color swatch)
  
    [  XXXX  Blue      ]
    [  XXXX  Green     ]
    [  XXXX  Orange    ]
    [  XXXX  Purple    ]
    [  XXXX  Other...  ]

The option menu displays the current color. If you choose "Other" then
it opens a color picker dialog. The color from the dialog appears in
the swatch next to Other and Other becomes the active option menu
item. OS X only has about 7 colors in the menu. Having a larger
palette there might slow people down.

Tasks are:

 1. select one of the preset colors (3 steps, click drag release)

 2. select a custom color (5 steps, click, drag, release, click color picker
    dialog, close dialog)

So vs. the color picker button, it speeds up selection of a preset
color (especially since OS X has no palette in the default page of the
color picker dialog), but slows down picking an exact color not in the
default option menu.

It is comparable to the color picker button, not the gnumeric combo,
in general, because it doesn't have the "apply most recent in one
click" feature. i.e. its active color is the current color of the
selection, not the last color you applied.

(this is my memory of the gnumeric combo, that if I choose a red cell,
the combo does not turn red - maybe I'm getting that wrong. but if I
remember right the gnumeric combo is an applier not a
picker/selector.)

Havoc