Re: [Usability] Re: GNOME 2 screenshot - GDict design

[Tuomas Kuosmanen <tigert ximian com>]

On Wed, 2001-11-28 at 17:56, Kevin Vandersloot wrote:
    Hey Seth or other usabilty folks. I've always thought gdict had an ugly
    interface. Anyone have any suggestions on how to improve it? I've started
    some minimal changes, and I was considering removing the toolbar since it
    seemed to me that you don't really need a toolbar to show 3-4 items.
    Anyways, anyone care to offer a nice design?

Okay, this is a later reply but what the heck...

I personally use "wordinspect" which is available as a debian package.
It is simple, elegant and nice. I use it with the sawfish "launchpad"
where I can select a word, hit a hotkey, and it pops up the dictionary
window for me for the word. 

    http://tigert.gimp.org/files/screenshots/wordinspect.png

Oh, and it does not have a preferences dialog :-) It is just plain gtk
but works fine for my needs. Gdict could do something similar that is
very simple:

.--------------------------------------------.
| Lookup word: [_gnome_________________][go!]|
|--------------------------------------------|
|                                            |
|                                            |
|                                            |
|                                            |
|                                            |
|         word definition area               |
|                                            |
|                                            |
|                                            |
|                                            |
|                                            |
|--------------------------------------------|
|                                  [ Close ] |
`--------------------------------------------'

Since there is the applet already, the main window really can be just a
dialog IMHO. So no toolbar or whatnot is needed really. And heck, just
make it look good by default, we dont need gdict.themes.org :-)
Wordinspect looks very slick and it is just black and white with some
boldface here and there. Works great.

The applet could use a label though, since the plain input field is a
bit hard to understand. It could *maybe* popup a dialog the first time
you start it, though I am not sure if it is a good idea. ("You can use
the small text field on your panel to type a word to get dictionary
lookup. Please note that it requires that you have an internet
connection active. [x] Dont show this again [Close]" or such)

----------------------------------------------- -- -
[ ] [ ] gnome panel  | Dictionary: [gnome__] |
-------------------------------------------------- -- - 

Since some people want ultra compact panels full of all the possible
gizmos, we could have a hidden gconf setting so you can set the label to
be something else, and even empty if you want with gconftool.

Tuomas

PS. For launchpad, see
http://www.linuxart.com/dir/stuff/configs/sawfish/launchpad/

PS2: If the above screenshot looks like crap for the text, it is because
I use gdkxft with the "cleartype" hack enabled, but you have a non-LCD
screen. It does RGB antialiasing with the LCD screen dots which does not
work on CRT displays.. makes text look very colorful :-)

-- 
:: :: Tuomas Kuosmanen  :: Art Director, Ximian :: ::
:: :: tigert ximian com :: www.ximian.com       :: ::