Re: [Usability] RFC: removing some colors from the panel...

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Sat, 4 Jun 2005, Vincent Untz wrote:

> Date: Sat, 04 Jun 2005 20:03:22 +0200
> From: Vincent Untz <vuntz gnome org>
> To: usability gnome org
> Subject: [Usability] RFC: removing some colors from the panel...
>
> Hi all,
>
> During GUADEC, one idea came to my mind. I have a lot of
> applets/launchers on my top panel and they all have nice colors.

Perhaps one of the Low Contrast themes might be enough?

> However, the panel is too distracting: when I work on a document, I
> often look at the applets instead of concentrating on the document.

Have you tried using a panel with Auto-hide enabled, or use a panel the
with Hide Arrows enabled?

> This is happening in part because the panel is too much visible. And
> probably because I have too many colors there: a lot of red, some green,
> a bit of yellow, etc. :-)

It would be nice if there was a simple way to set the icon used for
a panel applet as easily (or more easily) than the way users can set icons
for shortcuts.  (The old Mac OS made it easy to set a specific icon
for any file, you could cut and paste a new icon by selecting the
old icon in the Properties/Get Info dialog.)

> What do you think about moving all the panel contents to grayscale when
> the panel is not in use?

Window decorations grey out when not in use, and if you wanted to do this
in a general way and fade out any window (like the panel) that was not
currently in focus that might be interesting.  (This might already be
possible by using with transparent windows or something like that.)

I used to use Autohide on my Panel but I found the animation too
distracting and having the panel obscured made it harder to get at when I
did want it.  I expect I would feel similarly about having it greyed out,
but I couldn't say for sure.

> Imagine this: you work on a document and there is no color on your
> panel, so you can see it but it's not too much disturbing.

If you document editing program were in Fullscreen you would not see the
panel at all.

> However, once you put the mouse pointer over the panel (or the panel
> gets the focus), colors appear so you can easily distinguish all the
> applets/launchers.
>
> Maybe it can cause some problems for accessibility... I don't know. This
> is just a request for comments for now :-)

I don't know, I guess I'd make do with something that already exists
but your idea does have advantages and disadvantages to it and was an
interesting topic to bring up.

Hope that helps.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

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