dear calum and matthew.. i just forgot about your important mail about usability of cheese and just discovered it minutes ago. we werent able to include some changes for gnome 2.22 but we definitely want for 2.24. your input has been very useful for me. On Sat, 2008-02-02 at 23:34 +0000, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote: > On Jan 4, 2008, at 9:30 PM, daniel g. siegel wrote: > > ... > > while the ui of cheese gets described as quite good by some and as > > pretty bad by others, i would like to discuss the ui and usability of > > cheese and even enhance it to be full HIG compatible. i am not a > > usability expert and the ui of cheese was done step by step without > > even thinking about people with handicaps or other usability features. > > therefore it would be very nice if some of you could post their opinion > > about cheese and what we could do better. > > ... > > Cheese looks like a cool app! I'll add a few belated comments to those > others have already made. I tried Cheese 2.21.5 in Ubuntu Hardy. > > Launching Cheese twice produced two Cheese windows. I don't think this > should happen -- unless Cheese can handle multiple cameras, in which > case each instance should automatically choose a different camera. > Since I have no camera on my laptop at all, launching it a second time > should have just focused the first instance. right! http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=527736 > > I was expecting Cheese to notice that I had no camera, but it doesn't. > Instead, it shows me a test pattern -- and not even a static one, but > one with animated snow in the bottom right corner. This is ugly. > Instead, I suggest leaving the preview area grey, with "No camera > detected." or similar text centered in the middle (and ideally also a > button for installing or troubleshooting camera setup). sebastion keller provided a patch, where he copied the gedit "file is not valid" dialog to cheese. if you have time to build cheese from svn or to test a development tarball, please tell us, how you like it > > Minimizing then unminimizing the Cheese window causes the test pattern > to disappear, though it reappears when I click "Start recording". This > seems like a bug, though it's moot if you kill the test pattern > altogether. the "disappearing" doesnt happen anymore. in my opinion it would be nice have an animation, even if the animation is just the cheese logo moving around. with that, also people without a webcam are able to test cheese and to see whether they buy a webcam, ... > > Both the preview area and the gallery area have no border, which is > unrealistic. They should have bevel borders to make them look inset. yeah, this would be more logic > > Buttons and menu items should use Title Case: "Take a photo" should be > "Take a Photo" (both in the button and in the menu), "Start recording" > should be "Start Recording", "Stop recording" should be "Stop > Recording", and "Move all to Trash" should be "Move All to Trash". i commited this to svn > > Recording for ten seconds, then clicking "Stop recording", caused > Cheese to hang. (I stopped waiting and put Cheese out of its misery > after four minutes.) I don't know whether this was a side-effect of not > having a camera attached, or whether Cheese was waiting for some > intensive video conversion that should have been done in the background > instead. this should be fixed. at the time you tried cheese, it still was very sensitive about recording > > I agree with Alan that the first menu would be better as "File" -- it > should be for Filing the overall objects that the application deals > with, which in this case is photos and videos. For example, I'd expect > to see "Print..." and "Send by E-mail..." items in this menu. I > wouldn't expect "Photo" or "Video" in this menu, because they're modes > rather than filing actions. I like your suggestion of having "Take > Photo" and "Record" buttons visible simultaneously, because that avoids > the modes altogether. > > In the "Edit" menu I expected, but didn't find, a "Copy" item to copy > the selected photo to the clipboard; and a "Select All" item, to select > all the photos and videos. I did not expect to find "Effects", because > that's not an editing operation. > > The "Effects" button claims to have the "E" access key, but this > actually opens the "Edit" menu. for this change, i want to wait for new things like a preferences dialog coming first. > > "Back" is a weird way of navigating between the Effects pane and the > preview pane. If it's practical to show a live preview of all the > effects (they could have a much slower framerate than the full preview, > if necessary), you could make these panes explicit, using "Preview" and > "Effects" tabs. Otherwise, I agree with Calum's suggestion of using a > sidebar for the effects (though I'd put it on the right, rather than > the left, so it can appear and disappear without the preview having to > move). > > Which effects are in use could be shown more explicitly using a > checkbox near the top left corner of each -- though this might make > people slower, if they think they have to click the small checkbox > instead of clicking anywhere in the effect box. Perhaps use just a > checkmark, not a checkbox. we will have a live preview area ;) and i think then it totally makes sense to use tabs > > I agree with Calum's point that trashing a photo/recording should not > produce a confirmation alert, like it doesn't in Nautilus. (This alert > is worse in Cheese than it would be in Nautilus, because the photos and > videos do not have visible filenames. So when I'm asked "Are you sure > you want to move "0003.ogg" to the trash?", I have no idea what > "0003.ogg" is!) this message was removed > > The flash effect when taking a photo is neat, but the new photo appears > in the gallery area with no visual explanation. Ideally, the picture > would visibly zoom down from the preview area into the gallery. i never thought about this, but something should be possible > > After taking three photos, I tried to drag a box across two of them > (starting outside both) to select them for deletion, like I can in > Nautilus, but this didn't work. Shift+clicking didn't work for adding > to the selection either. for now cheese just supports single selection. i want to change that for 2.24 http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=481405 > > When I drag a photo from Cheese to the desktop, it doesn't appear where > I dropped it. Instead it ends up at the top left corner of the desktop, > which is right under the Cheese window, so I can't see it. It looks > like the drag and drop didn't work at all! I don't know whether this is > Nautilus's fault or Cheese's fault, but either way, it needs fixing. dnd is now broken, this is a regression of gio. http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=526398 > > I think "2008-02-02 11:20 PM (2)" would be a more useful default > filename than "0003.jpg". (It would be redundant if Cheese was running > on a filesystem that stores creation date separately from modification > date, but usually it won't be.) we are discussing this in http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=525739 2008-04-02-130920.jpg 2008-04-02-130920.ogv and then 2008-04-02-130920 (1).jpg 2008-04-02-130920 (1).ogv ... seems ok to me > > Cheers ################################# im now putting a few comments on calums mail > - It looks weird to have the buttons in the 'middle' of the window, > with (initially) a big empty white area at the bottom-- it looked like > the window hadn't drawn properly. (I know Photo Booth does this too, > but it uses clever shading to make the photo bin look like a 'tray'-- > not something I'd recommend you do, unless you can make it work in a > theme-compliant way.) I'd suggest either moving the buttons to the > bottom of the window, below the photo bin, or putting the photos in a > sidebar rather than along the bottom. i already made a few comments on this below, but please lets discuss this single issue here http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=509179 > > - Scrollbars: if keeping the photo bin rather than moving it to a > sidebar, you shouldn't show the horizontal scrollbar unless it's > actually required. totally true ;) > - I don't think this application needs a menu bar. Main application > windows should generally have either a menu bar or dialog-style > buttons, but not both. And you can already do everything except open > the online help without the menu bar. (You could add another button > for Help, on the far left-- same placement as dialogs.) > > - Since the 'affirmative' button is "Take a Photo" (or "Start > Recording"), this should probably be the button furthest to the > right. Also, its label shouldn't be in bold text. hmm.. i agree with this on dialog windows, but the big button in the center seems prettier to me (not talking about usability) > - Photos: I should be able to multiple-select existing photos using > the standard keyboard and mouse shortcuts, and perform the same > actions on the selection as I can on a single photo. as stated above > > - Opening photos: Perhaps an "Open With" menu item would be more > useful than just "Open"? like eog has? yeah! > > - Effects: IMHO it would be better if these were presented in a > sidebar or a floating palette, which could be shown or hidden by > clicking the button. That way I could see a live preview as I was > selecting my effects. You'd probably want to make the preview icons > much smaller if you did this, so you could see the full list without > having to make the window much larger. > > - Taking a photo: I'm guessing the red background and white font > colours in the countdown are hard coded, rather than taken from the > current gtk theme? IIRC gtk now supports extra theme colours like > 'critical' and 'warning'... so I'm guessing you should maybe be using > something like the 'critical' colour for the background here, with a > contrasting theme colour for the font. it would be great to use the primary gtk color, which is set by the gtk theme, not? > > - Countdown: the font and font size also seem to be hard coded; again, > they should both be taken from the theme. agree > > - Move to Trash: no confirmation alert is required for this action; > it's easy enough to "undo" (by manually recovering the photos from the > trash). > > Accessibility: main concerns here are the colours and fonts that > aren't taken from the theme (as I mentioned already), and the non- > standard way of showing focus on the photo thumbnails and selected > effects. If you move the effects to a sidebar you could just use a > standard list control, so you'd get the focus effect for free. For > the photos, it would be better to draw a focus indicator around the > photo rather than tinting it-- the gtk theme provides you with the > required thickness and colour of focus indicators. Ideally, the > effect icons should all be themeable as well, although I wouldn't > expect many themes to override them. > daniel -- this mail was sent using 100% recycled electrons ================================================ daniel g. siegel <dgsiegel gmail com> http://home.cs.tum.edu/~siegel gnupg key id: 0x6EEC9E62 fingerprint: DE5B 1F64 9034 1FB6 E120 DE10 268D AFD5 6EEC 9E62 encrypted email preferred
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