Re: [Usability] Image Viewing vs. Editing

["Matthew Thomas" <mpt myrealbox com>]

Jacob Beauregard wrote:
>...
> I have an idea. It seems that there's a battle
> between image viewing and editing for default
> application's file association between different
> users. Some users use mostly image editing, while
> some users mostly just want to view files. However,
> there are more users in the general middle
> ground that would like to do both, and usually I end
> up picking viewing because I don't like the load time 
> for editing programs. However, I find the cost of
> having to close out of a program when I actually
> intend to edit an image fairly high.
>...
> However, what about this scenario: have an "open in
> default image editor" button in the image viewer.
>...

This is an excellent point, but it doesn't apply just to images. It also applies at least to HTML files (e.g. Nvu vs. Epiphany) and to vector drawings (e.g. Inkscape vs. EOG).

So it might be worth considering a UI that can work across document types, rather than being special-cased in image viewers.

--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/