I forgot to blog about this: I'm not giving up maintainership of Gwenview anymore, in fact it has been decided that Gwenview will move to kdegraphics for KDE4! This is what I call great news!
The nice people from kde-usability and I have been working on the design of this new Gwenview. It's going to be a bit different from what you have been used to, but I believe it's more focused on the way most people use Gwenview: either to quickly view an image, or to browse all images in a folder.
To wet your appetite, here are two mock-ups of what Gwenview 2.0 will probably look like:
[image:2658 size=thumbnail] [image:2659 size=thumbnail]
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Great
Now this is some great news! Thanks Aurélien!
View actions
As Thomas pointed out, view-related actions are not the most frequently used by the target users, compared to next/prev/search actions. Recently I am more convinced that statusbar is the pace where such actions could be put (if your really want them to have in more places than just in the menu).
That's more modern usage of the status bar...
BTW, zoom controls could be provided as statusbar slider (look at the current Krita). Having zoom only as the old-fashioned buttons in the toolbar remind me limtations of the past APIs (problems with embedding widgets cleanly into the toolbar) - apparently not the case now.
Lovely!
Is that your little girl?
I'm wondering why you would want to give the mode-buttons such a prominent place. I'm pretty sure the average usecase does not change viewmode very often (if at all). So having them in the view menu is just fine. Which makes me immediately notice your mockups don't have a menu, I trust that's a mistake and not a design decision.
Yes, this is Clara wearing
Yes, this is Clara wearing her christmas suit. Including pictures of her, is my very own Jedi trick to make people pleased with my mock-ups
About view mode buttons, it is a conscious decision. I think Martin explains clearly why it is done this way.
toolbar
Actually, I thought of one more important reason to keep the view mode buttons in a prominent place.
Applications that can operate in more than one mode run the risk of being confusing: "Last time I used this image viewer, I believe there were little thumbnails under the picture. Where are they now?" Thanks to the big mode buttons in Gwenview, the risk of confusion is very much reduced. They serve the triple purpose of making obvious:
The illustrative icons on the buttons are very useful for all three purposes.
No...
Easy shifting between the view modes is what Gwenview is all about, IMHO. This is precisely what makes it the only image viewing application I need. First, I might want an overview. Then I want to see just one picture with minimal clutter. A little later I want an overview again.
Granted, this is just the personal opinion of an actual user and not a fancy "average usecase". But it makes me wonder just what the sample size is for that average. Sorry for the rant, but if you want to argue using scientific-sounding terms, at least do the empirical work first.
You are not your user
Thats a saying that a lot of professional Usability people have said over the years. And its true; developers use an application different from most users. Just because you are also a user doesn't mean everyone will want to use it like you do.
There is little empirical about either your post or mine. But my suggestion has the advantage that its based on observing multiple non-technical users. 3 of them in the last month. (yes, that excludes me and a friend who I place in the highly-technical category). They all had one major goal; to watch the pictures one by one, or as a slideshow.
The secondairy goal of browsing the files is fulfilled just fine for them by apps like konqueror or digicam.
Now, its not a problem at all that gwenview has the different viewmodes. Its wonderful in fact. But its not the major goal of most people that will use this application. So need to place it as the first buttons on the toolbar. I'd say there is no need to place it on the toolbar at all.
After all; the technical people will find such functions just fine if you place them in the view-menu. I'd even add the F2,F3,F4 keyboar shortcuts to them to make even more people happy. All people happy without showing the feature that many won't use in the toolbar. Remember; a toolbars sole purpose is to provide for often-used actions.
Apps should implement an LRU scheme
Remember; a toolbars sole purpose is to provide for often-used actions.
^^ Good point. Seems to me like the application should automate this by using a LRU scheme to decide which actions to display. There's a default setup in the beginning which is quickly modified as the app adjusts itself to the user's workflow. I guess you should be able to pin actions down to the toolbar as well just in case...
Sensible no?
Ben
Promising
Looks promising- I would like to see how it behaves (in the first screenshot) when there are more images, so when a scrollbar or something similar turns up. Will it scroll left to right (like in Windows XP) or will it scroll up to down (like Gwenview 1.x)?
Can you post another screenshot?
Gwenview should be in
Gwenview should be in kdegraphics. Its well deserved.