Re: [Usability] Theme Instant Apply

[Kirk Bridger <kbridger shaw ca>]

Thomas Wood wrote:

> Could anyone give me some advice on bug 149323 (HIG issues with Theme 
> Preferences). The issue is that the theme manager often takes longer 
> than one second to apply a theme, so therefore it should not be 
> instant apply. Would it be acceptable to most people to change the 
> theme manager  to explicit apply?
>
>
> -Thomas
>
>
> [1] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=149323
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Is the 1 second thing a technological limitation?  I guess on less 
powerful systems this just might not realistic.

Perhaps it would be best to have instant apply with user feedback?  
WindowsXP does that fade to gray fade back thing.  That process can be 
scaled to last long enough to match the computer's speed.  But I wonder 
if that would be a good idea with instant apply.  Then an accidental 
click could be very frustrating.  There might be a better way to provide 
user feedback asking them to wait than the fade effect, or a busy 
cursor, but I can't think of any right now.

The theme previews aren't really big enough to decide if you like it or 
not, so clicking through them is needed to make the decision - to 'try' 
them out would be best.  I think if the user is provided with an 
"Applying Theme" type of feedback, implicit would still be best.

Kirk