Re: [Usability] FOSA ideas

[Bryan W Clark <clarkbw clarkson edu>]

On Tue, 2003-09-09 at 14:08, Sean Middleditch wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-09-09 at 13:36, Bryan W Clark wrote:
> 
> > Personally when opening a file I would prefer a nautilus type view
> > because with the movie and picture thumbnailing that is built in there I
> > find it easy to get the exact file I want.  I'm sure as other thumbnails
> > come along for other file types it will get even easier for those types
> > as well.
> 
> > So I made a quick mock up of what I'd appreciate in an FO
> > http://www.clarkson.edu/~clarkbw/clarkbw-FO.png
> > 
> > Note there are no file extensions, because the program i'm opening the
> > file from should have told the FO dialog what it can handle and I don't
> > need to waste space seeing that. (maybe an option to view extensions
> > would be good somewhere hidden in the gconf for those of you who will
> > flame over this)
> 
> gconf again not being in gtk, this could be problematic.  

Ah yes, and you make a good point below about this.

> > Each file has a thumbnail of it's contents, this makes it easy to know
> > what I'm opening especially if I have a harddrive full of movies and I
> > don't remember the name, but do remember that it was the one with the
> > Bert and Ernie skit.
> 
> In this case we do have the preview widget, which should definitely be
> used in the case of movies, and actually most other documents.  A teensy
> thumbnail can be pretty useless on many file types (which you do address
> below).
> 
> 
> > I did put a zoom control at the top right because maybe someone wants a
> > larger size thumbnail, my eye sight is pretty good but I'm young.
> 
> So if I need to zoom in to see the thumbnail, the list becomes next to
> useless since all it can show is the thumbnail?  Seems better to remove
> the zoom and just allow for the preview.  The thumbnail should just be
> the MIME icon, which is useful especially when we have no extensions
> shown.  (I *do* care if I'm opening "some-image" in PNG or XCF - one has
> all the layers and such for editing further, the other is just a bitmap
> useful for display.)

Ok, so the Zoom option is removed now simply for this reason and since
we do have the preview file option to get a bigger view of a file.

For a markup of what Eli Dow and I changed, take a look at this one.

http://www.clarkson.edu/~clarkbw/clarkbw-OLD-FO.png


Then for the new and improved view of this check out the UFO (Universal
File Open)

http://www.clarkson.edu/~clarkbw/clarkbw-dowem-UFO.png

The Location bar has been moved up

The "New Folder" option has been removed, because nobody creates new
folders when they are looking to open a file.

The Zoom is gone, as briefly talked about above.

We added the file extensions back in.  I didn't want to do this really
because I'd much rather not include it.   However we can't come up with
a magic way of showing people the difference between the same file
that's an xcf and png that are both thumbnailed.  I was hoping it would
be possible to do a decorator or something similar to what Eclipse does,
but I don't know if that's really possible.

Some renames of the text, Directory -> Folders

Oh and we put the OK / Cancel buttons in there finally!

Plus a whole lot of other little improvements to the L/F

The "Location://" was a way of showing the Location text while running
out of room in the toolbar area.

----

Ok, I'm looking forward to getting lots of comments again on this one
and then we'll revise again and start work on a SA dialog box.  

~ Bryan

---
Bryan W Clark
Graduate What?
Math && Computer Science Dept.
Clarkson University
Potsdam, NY USA

http://www.clarkson.edu/~clarkbw/