A couple thoughts:

Has anybody come to a consensus about whether or not the no-image dialog should persist after an image is opened? Even for expert users, it might be useful to keep the no-image dialog open as a drop-target for opening more images, but I can also see how it would annoy some users. Perhaps that should be an option which is shown up-front on the dialog instead of buried in config settings. For instance, at the bottom of the dialog there could be a checkbox labeled:

"Close this window when an image is opened"

There's a little precedent for this sort of option -- it's similar to the "Never show this tip again" options in tip systems. Speaking of tips...

4) The tips can be disabled.

I suppose that's good, but all that space being used for the tip *could* be used for a more efficient start screen. For instance, the most recent images could be shown in a list instead of hidden in a drop-down.

Slightly off-topic:

I understand that people want to find a way to show tips in an unobtrusive way, but maybe we can take a hint (no pun intended) from video games here: the loading screen would be a great place for tips, since the user has nothing to do but twiddle their thumbs during that time anyway.

Cheers,

-Rick-

Forwarding accidentally done personal reply.

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Laxminarayan Kamath
Date: Sat, 8 Mar 2008 09:04:01 +0530 Subject: Re: [Gimp-developer] no-image-open redux To: Bill Skaggs
About changing the menu .. Would the end user like a perpetually changing menu. At least I have got tired of playing this "hide and seek" with the menu items every time a new version of the GIMP comes in.
Supposing now there is no choice, .. if I were to shorten the menu, I would keep the "View" menu, and move the select menu into "Edit". But then that is my preference.
And yes, I see no problem in doing away with the toolbar. The four options you have provided are nothing but the four first options in the "file" menu.
In the perspective of a beginner, if the beginner finds no such toolbar, he will explore the menus. And it will probably be only two more seconds than otherwise that he finds those options. In the perspective of a pro, he will know "Ctrl+n" and "Ctlr+o" anyways. So it does not help much anyway.

On 3/8/08, Bill Skaggs wrote:

To keep the ball rolling, I thought it might be useful to show a copy of my current experimental version of a no-image-open window. Most features should be obvious from the picture, but a couple of notes:

1) The toolbar shows most of the things a user might want to do with no image open, but not quite all. "Aquire", or "Open as layers", could be added, or even "Create", which would access the menu for creating buttons, logos etc. "About" could, and probably should, be removed.

2) I felt like I had to shorten the main menu, because it made the window too wide. I did this by shifting the categories I use least into submenus -- "View" into "Image", and "Tools", "Dialogs", and "Xtns" into a new "Gimp" category.

--
Laxminarayan Kamath Ammembal
(+91) 9945036093

On Sat, 08 Mar 2008 04:02:40 +0100, William Skaggs wrote:

Also for what it's worth, I've been a bit worried about including a toolbar
like the one I showed, precisely because users who find it useful would want to have it available even after an image has been opened.

Hi,

that worry could be got around by doing just that , make it available. Right-click : remove toolbar for those who find it superfluous and want to recover the land rights.

Opera , for example , has miriad panels and bars available with a resonalbe subset on by default (most of which I bin rapidly to get things the way I like to work). This config is maintained next time I use it and gives me exactly the layout I find efficient for my work load and way of doing things.

Right-click on any toolbar or panel gives acces to a global "configure toolbars" situation.

Another useful feature in Opera setup is "make everything visible" while selecting the elements you need. This is a horrible clutter (since this is not a work mode) and allows you to see all that is available and keep the bits you need and avoids clicking things on and off to find out what they are called.

I think Opera's solution is a good example of presenting a very complex set of tools, panels and windows that cater for many different user senarios whilst maintaining almost complete flexibility of screen layout.

Since Gimp UI is similarly a constant challenge of screen space vs function accessibility Opera setup may provide some useful ideas.

/gg

gg@catking.net wrote on Sat, Mar 8, 2008 at 6:26 AM :

Right-click : remove toolbar for those who find it superfluous

a small "[x]" button on top right of the toolbar might be better. Most people are used to "Right click == context menu" behaviour. The toolbar disappearing would freak them. Of course, the "close toolbar" can also be an option in the context menu that could appear when you do a "Right Click" .

On Fri, 2008-03-07 at 20:48 -0500, Rick Yorgason wrote:

Has anybody come to a consensus about whether or not the no-image dialog should persist after an image is opened?

This idea is new to me. The whole point is to represent GIMP if there's no image, right? So it's not even a dialog, but the main app window.

Even for expert users, it
might be useful to keep the no-image dialog open as a drop-target for opening more images, but I can also see how it would annoy some users.

I can see how it would annoy pretty much all users. It would very likely end up hidden below the image window ...

Bill Skaggs wrote:

To keep the ball rolling, I thought it might be useful to show a copy of my current experimental version of a no-image-open window.

Hello

First of all, it's great that someone is working on and looking into how to best fix most aching UI problems GIMP has.

But what you currently have seems to be very far from the spec [1]. Is this intentional or have you just not been able to steer your current work into the direction of the spec? Just asking since it would be sad if someone worked hard on something that isn't going to be used anyway :/

Best regards, Martin Nordholts

[1] http://gui.gimp.org/index.php/No_image_open_specification

Hi,

On Fri, 2008-03-07 at 20:48 -0500, Rick Yorgason wrote:

I understand that people want to find a way to show tips in an unobtrusive way, but maybe we can take a hint (no pun intended) from video games here: the loading screen would be a great place for tips, since the user has nothing to do but twiddle their thumbs during that time anyway.

Starting GIMP takes about three to five seconds. I don't think that gives anyone enough time to twiddle thumbs or to read tips.

Sven

Hi,

On Fri, 2008-03-07 at 13:37 -0800, Bill Skaggs wrote:

1) The toolbar shows most of the things a user might want to do with no image open, but not quite all. "Aquire", or "Open as layers", could be added, or even "Create", which would access the menu for creating buttons, logos etc. "About" could, and probably should, be removed.

I don't think such a toolbar should be added. If at all then it should be added to the image window all the time. And we would have to consider carefully what we want to show there. Only adding it for the no-image case is confusing and inconsistent.

2) I felt like I had to shorten the main menu, because it made the window too wide. I did this by shifting the categories I use least into submenus -- "View" into "Image", and "Tools", "Dialogs", and "Xtns" into a new "Gimp" category.

Resorting the menus is something that we should avoid to do again. And I don't think that the current menu is too wide. Just make the image window wider. A typical application window nowadays takes 2/3 of the screen width or even all of the screen. I don't see why the GIMP image window should not be allowed to do that as well.

Anyway, this is something that the UI team should specify. I hope that we will get some more input from Peter on this soon.

Sven

On Saturday 08 March 2008 19:49:48 Bill Skaggs wrote:

After discussing these things with Enselic on IRC, I've come to realize that the most basic question is what we expect the user to do with this window.

My two cents: nether wasking space on screen or behind other windows cluttering the taskbar is a good option... How about making it non-taskbar and accessible through an icon in notification tray where it comes up as notice window and stays above all other windows for easy D&D until dismissed either by [x] click or click on the icon? It would have an added benefit of keeping gimp running all the time to quickly open an image without desktop clutter... That way the window would be very useful.

Hi,

On Sat, 2008-03-08 at 09:49 -0800, Bill Skaggs wrote:

After discussing these things with Enselic on IRC, I've come to realize that the most basic question is what we expect the user to do with this window. If we expect the user to mainly keep it minimized, and only bring it up when intending to open an image, then there is no problem if it is large and full of empty space. (It still shouldn't be *too* large if it is going to be a drop target, or it will tend to cover up the drag source.) If, however, we expect the user to keep it open in a corner of the screen, then it needs to be relatively small, and visually attractive. I have been designing with the small-attractive goal in mind, but maybe that is the wrong approach.

Why should a user keep the no-image window open? This window will only ever be there, in this mode, for a few seconds. It is shown when GIMP is started without specifying images on the command-line. The user will then either create a new image or open an existing one. And it will be there when the user closes the last image. At that point she is either done using GIMP and exits the application or she starts to work on another image.

Sven

Hi,

I should probably add that of course the toolbox and probably another dock window will also be open. So there is really no point in making this a small window. It should be large enough to serve as the parent window for all palette windows that the user configured for GIMP. A lot of users will probably even maximize this window. And we should add code that remembers this state and open it maximized the next time GIMP is started.

Sven

I'm afraid that this "no image window" sounds more and more like the photoshop-esque gray background window that everybody have been asking for all these years.
The idea of keeping it, even when there is an image open, seems to back that up. It will end up as a maximizable window and all the other windows will have a always-on-top hint. And we'll have WiW. :-p

Until I don't see the proposal of the UI team, I won't understand why an introductory window with common tasks (new, open, open recent) is a bad idea.

Gez.

By default, Adobe Illustrator shows a "no illustration" dialog when no file is open. In every version I have ever used, I turned it off on my first use of the program. Until I installed CS3 that is. While I fully understand that GIMP should not emulate Adobe, this dialog is functional enough for me to leave it enabled and actually make use of it. A "clear list" button should be enough for those ashamed of what they've been working on :)

Just 0.02 from an end-user that lurks on the list...

Chris

On Sat, 08 Mar 2008 08:47:14 +0100, Laxminarayan Kamath wrote:

gg@catking.net wrote on Sat, Mar 8, 2008 at 6:26 AM :

Right-click : remove toolbar for those who find it superfluous

a small "[x]" button on top right of the toolbar might be better. Most people are used to "Right click == context menu" behaviour. The toolbar disappearing would freak them. Of course, the "close toolbar" can also be an option in the context menu that could appear when you do a "Right Click" .

Sorry if my post was not clear, I was meaning that rightclick popped up something including the choice to remove the toolbar. This is how Opera does it, which I why I suggested looking at Opera.

Obviously just zapping the toolbar on rightclick would be very disrouting.

On Sat, Mar 8, 2008 at 4:14 PM, Sven Neumann wrote:

Starting GIMP takes about three to five seconds.

It takes ~7 sec on my 4 years old laptop (running Linux, a top model at the time of buying) and ~20 (or more) second on my old workstation (Windows) at work. While I agree with you on the tips thing, I think it's worth reminding that not everyone has a modern computer or uses Linux.

Alexandre

Sven wrote:

Anyway, this is something that the UI team should specify. I hope that we will get some more input from Peter on this soon.

after being drowned in work, I have time in the next days to wrap up this spec.

--ps

founder + principal interaction architect man + machine interface works

http://mmiworks.net/blog : on interaction architecture

sending this again:

Sven wrote:

Anyway, this is something that the UI team should specify. I hope that we will get some more input from Peter on this soon.

after being drowned in work, I have time in the next days to wrap up this spec.

--ps

founder + principal interaction architect man + machine interface works

http://mmiworks.net/blog : on interaction architecture

Hi,

On Sat, 2008-03-08 at 18:21 -0200, Guillermo Espertino wrote:

I'm afraid that this "no image window" sounds more and more like the photoshop-esque gray background window that everybody have been asking for all these years.

We aren't talking about an extra window here. Please don't call it an "no image window". It's the image window, just in a special state where it doesn't show an image because no image is currently opened. At least that's how I understand the idea...

Sven

Hi,

On Mon, 2008-03-10 at 18:43 +0300, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

It takes ~7 sec on my 4 years old laptop (running Linux, a top model at the time of buying) and ~20 (or more) second on my old workstation (Windows) at work. While I agree with you on the tips thing, I think it's worth reminding that not everyone has a modern computer or uses Linux.

If it is so much slower on Windows, why hasn't anyone profiled the startup phase on Windows and pointed out where this time is spent?

Sven

On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 10:18 PM, Sven Neumann wrote:

If it is so much slower on Windows, why hasn't anyone profiled the startup phase on Windows and pointed out where this time is spent?

If I'm pointed to a profiling tool for Win and docs, I could try to do it ;-)

(Considering this initial step is a non-programmer's task)

Alexandre

On Monday, March 10, 2008, 20:18:30, Sven Neumann wrote:

If it is so much slower on Windows, why hasn't anyone profiled the startup phase on Windows and pointed out where this time is spent?

It takes about 10 seconds to start it for the first time on my machine, later it's up in about 4 seconds. About a quarter of this time is spent starting script-fu.

Hi,

On Mon, 2008-03-10 at 22:25 +0100, jernej@ena.si wrote:

It takes about 10 seconds to start it for the first time on my machine, later it's up in about 4 seconds. About a quarter of this time is spent starting script-fu.

Yeah. Script-Fu and the data files (brushes, gradients, ...) are the two areas where optimizations would help to reduce the startup time significantly.

Sven

On Mon, 2008-03-10 at 18:43 +0300, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

On Sat, Mar 8, 2008 at 4:14 PM, Sven Neumann wrote:

Starting GIMP takes about three to five seconds.

It takes ~7 sec on my 4 years old laptop

25 seconds on my Dell Latitude d600, the first time, and closer to 7 seconds if I quit and start again immediately.

About 10 seconds on my desktop.

Both run Linux.

For my part I really *like* the tips. Although I would like them more if they linked to tutorials and documentation either on the GIMP Website or locally ("read more...").

Liam

Hi,

I'd like to point out that startup speed is also dependent on what resources you have installed. With lots of brushes or patterns, startup time can be significantly inflated ( I have a set of 900 brushes that inflate startup times from 6sec -> 35sec). So you should make sure that you test with only default resources, or else specify what extra resources you have installed.

On Sat, Mar 15, 2008 at 1:17 PM, Liam R E Quin wrote:

On Mon, 2008-03-10 at 18:43 +0300, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote: > On Sat, Mar 8, 2008 at 4:14 PM, Sven Neumann wrote: > > Starting GIMP takes about three to five seconds. >
> It takes ~7 sec on my 4 years old laptop

25 seconds on my Dell Latitude d600, the first time, and closer to 7 seconds if I quit and start again immediately.

About 10 seconds on my desktop.

Both run Linux.

For my part I really *like* the tips. Although I would like them more if they linked to tutorials and documentation either on the GIMP Website or locally ("read more...").

Liam

-- Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/ Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/ Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org www.advogato.org