New UI mockup on KDE brainstorms

[Martin Klapetek]

Hi,

maybe you've noticed already, I just found this new UI mockup for digiKam - http://forum.kde.org/brainstorm.php#idea87932_page1 - especially the second one looks very nice. What do you think?

Marty

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In my opinion the second one has several ideas that are not valid, at least
for me:

1. You already can display only the filename if you want to, and display all
the other information in the tooltip

2. Moving the search bar for the folder view into the status bar is very
confusing, because now you don't see their relation anymore. You have two
lineinput fields beside each other, both entitled with "search".

3. Remove one marble icon: Hmm these are two different panels. We should
either add a magnifying glass two the left marble icon or create a totally new
icon, but removing it is wrong. But maybe I misunderstood his point, and he
was really only talking about the icon, not the panel.


About the first screenshot:
I already said that we need an option to turn off those overlays, especially
the "full size preview" label. They are very annoying. I already read
complains in some Linux forum that the new digiKam became "ugly" and that it
throws annoying information at you :-) ...and that we don't go the KDE way,
that allows to configure your application the way you want....

Well anyway the first screenshot is basically a visual improvement, I think it
is ok. But we definitely need to provide an option to turn those overlays off
again.

Andi Clemens
-----------------
www.digikam.org

On Tuesday 18 May 2010 01:13:27 Martin Klapetek wrote:
> Hi,
>
> maybe you've noticed already, I just found this new UI mockup for digiKam -
> http://forum.kde.org/brainstorm.php#idea87932_page1 - especially the second
> one looks very nice. What do you think?
>
> Marty
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[Julien Narboux]

Le 18/05/2010 07:20, Andi Clemens a écrit :
> In my opinion the second one has several ideas that are not valid, at least
> for me:
>
> 1. You already can display only the filename if you want to, and display all
> the other information in the tooltip
>
>    
I agree.
> 2. Moving the search bar for the folder view into the status bar is very
> confusing, because now you don't see their relation anymore. You have two
> lineinput fields beside each other, both entitled with "search".
>
>    

I agree.

> About the first screenshot:
> I already said that we need an option to turn off those overlays, especially
> the "full size preview" label. They are very annoying. I already read
> complains in some Linux forum that the new digiKam became "ugly" and that it
> throws annoying information at you :-) ...and that we don't go the KDE way,
> that allows to configure your application the way you want....
>
> Well anyway the first screenshot is basically a visual improvement, I think it
> is ok. But we definitely need to provide an option to turn those overlays off
> again.
>

I think a good solution for this would be that Digikam dynamically loads first a magnified version of the thumbnail, then the reduced size preview, then the full size picture. This would remove the need for these labels, we would only need a way to say that the system is still busy loading the full size preview.


What IMHO would be also nice to have in the thumbnail view is a
reduction  of the empty space.
-1- when all thumbnail in a row are in landscape we can reduce the empty
space above and below the thumbnail.
-2- when all thumbnail in a row are in portrait we can reduce the empty
space on the left and on the right of the thumbnail.
-3- when all thumbnail in a row do not have any tag we can remove the
space for the tag.
-4- maybe the mouseover buttons to rotate and select and give stars
could be above the thumbnail.
-5- the size of the thumbnails could be ajusted such that it divides the
width of the thumbview, the selector for thumbnail size would be changed
to a selector for the number of thumbnail per row.


my 5 cents

Julien


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[Gilles Caulier-4]

2010/5/18 Andi Clemens <[hidden email]>:

> In my opinion the second one has several ideas that are not valid, at least
> for me:
>
> 1. You already can display only the filename if you want to, and display all
> the other information in the tooltip
>
> 2. Moving the search bar for the folder view into the status bar is very
> confusing, because now you don't see their relation anymore. You have two
> lineinput fields beside each other, both entitled with "search".
>
> 3. Remove one marble icon: Hmm these are two different panels. We should
> either add a magnifying glass two the left marble icon or create a totally new
> icon, but removing it is wrong. But maybe I misunderstood his point, and he
> was really only talking about the icon, not the panel.
>
>
> About the first screenshot:
> I already said that we need an option to turn off those overlays, especially
> the "full size preview" label. They are very annoying. I already read
> complains in some Linux forum that the new digiKam became "ugly" and that it
> throws annoying information at you :-) ...and that we don't go the KDE way,
> that allows to configure your application the way you want....
>
> Well anyway the first screenshot is basically a visual improvement, I think it
> is ok. But we definitely need to provide an option to turn those overlays off
> again.

The preview widget is under porting to pure Qt4 by Marcel in GSoC
devel branch. After that we can add an option somewhere in Control
panel to switch on/off this annotation.

For a lots of users which use raw, this annotation is important,
especially to learn the program, and to know that we can load jpeg
preview or Raw image data in preview area. The result is different and
confuse users if no information is given. i remember a lots of report
in user ML about this subject.

About Forum, i read a lots of report about F-spot which is better than
digiKam. F-spot is more easy to handle than digiKam. Perhaps, but
digiKam is more pro like iface. Also, let's me use f-spot more than 5
mns, and i can crash it very quickly. This project is not serious for
me.

Gilles
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[Gilles Caulier-4]

2010/5/18 Andi Clemens <[hidden email]>:

> In my opinion the second one has several ideas that are not valid, at least
> for me:
>
> 1. You already can display only the filename if you want to, and display all
> the other information in the tooltip
>
> 2. Moving the search bar for the folder view into the status bar is very
> confusing, because now you don't see their relation anymore. You have two
> lineinput fields beside each other, both entitled with "search".
>
> 3. Remove one marble icon: Hmm these are two different panels. We should
> either add a magnifying glass two the left marble icon or create a totally new
> icon, but removing it is wrong. But maybe I misunderstood his point, and he
> was really only talking about the icon, not the panel.

I'm agree with Andi there. For me this ss is a regression or a
miss-understood of current options available in control panel, to
customize digiKam iface.

I don't like background frame. It's overload interface. the most
important stuff in Icon view are items, not background.

Gilles

>
>
> About the first screenshot:
> I already said that we need an option to turn off those overlays, especially
> the "full size preview" label. They are very annoying. I already read
> complains in some Linux forum that the new digiKam became "ugly" and that it
> throws annoying information at you :-) ...and that we don't go the KDE way,
> that allows to configure your application the way you want....
>
> Well anyway the first screenshot is basically a visual improvement, I think it
> is ok. But we definitely need to provide an option to turn those overlays off
> again.
>
> Andi Clemens
> -----------------
> www.digikam.org
>
> On Tuesday 18 May 2010 01:13:27 Martin Klapetek wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> maybe you've noticed already, I just found this new UI mockup for digiKam -
>> http://forum.kde.org/brainstorm.php#idea87932_page1 - especially the second
>> one looks very nice. What do you think?
>>
>> Marty
> _______________________________________________
> Digikam-devel mailing list
> [hidden email]
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-devel
>

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[Paristo]

On Tuesday 18 May 2010 08:20:18 Andi Clemens wrote:
> In my opinion the second one has several ideas that are not valid, at
> least for me:
>
> 1. You already can display only the filename if you want to, and
> display all the other information in the tooltip

Yes, that is possible. But I think the idea is on the style and not on the
possibility. But for me, I think the lines were adding clutter to UI. If I
have (as I have) albums what includes even 1700 photos (all rated,
unwanted deleted so everyone is needed to be stored and find quick if
needed), I would not like at all such bars between photos. They make few
things.

1. Adds colors and edges what makes it harder to notice differences from
thumbnails.

2. Does not look nice when having big thumbnails ( I have fullsize
thumbnails some computers, on some I have 127px).

3. Would need a more complex theme engine and then multiple themes. This
is something what could possible be done with Plasma, but would we really
want to bring plasma to inside digiKam? I dont think so.

But I think we could on some point make the theme tool available again and
have more options for it than what it had. Maybe possible to have a
background SVG. But I would like to keep it much as possible as KDE app
than own kind. Small themeing options like what we now have with color
styles is good. Just wider possibilities for that would be fine.

> 2. Moving the search bar for the folder view into the status bar is
> very confusing, because now you don't see their relation anymore. You
> have two lineinput fields beside each other, both entitled with
> "search".

It does that but it does as well force user to have the statusbar. I do
not use it all the time, but I use more often the album search. The
statusbar in digiKam is currently littlebit tricky one. It has great
position and tools, but sometimes you want to have all vertical space as
possible. For such I believe there is one fix but it needs illustrating
the fullscreen functions more. I think I can littlebit think about it
more.

> 3. Remove one marble icon: Hmm these are two different panels. We
> should either add a magnifying glass two the left marble icon or
> create a totally new icon, but removing it is wrong. But maybe I
> misunderstood his point, and he was really only talking about the
> icon, not the panel.

I think the marble icon fits there well. Because it is similar then later
and the function is for GPS, so earth tells well what it is for. Other one
could be a satelite but as small is almost impossible to do and what would
a satelite tell the people? Not much. Country flag does not work either.
We could use something like a pin, but it would be unique, unless we use
something what Google use. But it is a under trademark. So I would leave
it as it is. And it fits to KDE SC.

> About the first screenshot:
> I already said that we need an option to turn off those overlays,
> especially the "full size preview" label. They are very annoying. I
> already read complains in some Linux forum that the new digiKam became
> "ugly" and that it throws annoying information at you :-) ...and that
> we don't go the KDE way, that allows to configure your application the
> way you want....

I can agree that overlays do look ugly currently. That is something what
need to be located somewhere. There is good and bad sides on those. I
think we could someway move the "Preview" to statusbar but we know we all
do not use it so it is not good thing. And currently the statusbar has
next/previous and first/last buttons, so why the double ones. Many tricky
questions what needs to be taken. I might have a fix for that but it is
not ready (at all at least on digiKam part, only for partially for
showFoto).

We need to think good configuration options, BUT very sane good defaults
so people who start using digiKam, can find it pleasing and easy. In the
end, we are responsible for advanced and professional photographers to
offer something what they can not find from other photo management
applcations for Linux (and other FOSS OS's).
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[Paristo]

On Tuesday 18 May 2010 09:35:03 Julien Narboux wrote:
> This would remove the need for these labels, we would only need a way
> to say that the system is still busy loading the full size preview.

I think best would be some simple and clean way to notify the user that
the preview is simple one. And then offer in one click to load the full
size preview. I would not place the preview to be automatic in background
because we have situations like:

1. Laptops running on battery. Generating full size preview takes lots of
CPU.

2. There would need to be a loading animation what would give many a
exception to wait something to happend or feel that digiKam is slow. And
when suddenly the preview gets changed, it can feel somekind magic.
 
> What IMHO would be also nice to have in the thumbnail view is a
> reduction  of the empty space.

Those should take only in place when user has configured the UI to be
without tags, comments, rating or file name. I had a understanding from
your idea that the space would be generated automatically. Like if the row
has no tags, then that row is closer to other rows, what might have tags?

In that case (if I did not misunderstand) the UI would look very weird.
Some photos would have big space around them and some would not. The
thumbnailview would look more like loose post stamp book than photo album.

The one great usability effect the current grid layout is that is all the
times same size and eyes has easy to follow the thumbnails when there is
not different spaces.

> -4- maybe the mouseover buttons to rotate and select and give stars
> could be above the thumbnail.
Rotate and select should be above thumbnail. But rating should be under.
Example in touchscreens, you can rotate and select without seeing the
thumbnail. But rating can change even then when just placing rating. And
it is normal to see what you point. On rotating you already have made the

> -5- the size of the thumbnails could be ajusted such that it divides the
> width of the thumbview, the selector for thumbnail size would be changed
> to a selector for the number of thumbnail per row.

That could be nice thing. It just would fix the problem with the right
side what can leave bigger space if there is just not space for a
thumbnail. But it is depending the size of the sidepanel.

And that might depend lots of the thumbnail resizing functions. Would the
thumbnails be needed to be generated again if scaling the sidepanel or
hiding/showing it?
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[Aditya Bhatt]

This is how it looks in digiKam : http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/5383/digikamsnap.png , when I disable the showing of rating and dates. A lot of space is empty. Also I don't really enjoy that thick black border that appears on mouseover. Or that is also seen without mouseover in other themes.

Personally, I like how Gwenview does it : http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/7859/gwenviewsnap.png In the vertical photos, the mouseover buttons appear over the image.

Just my 2 cents.

On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 5:09 PM, Risto Saukonpää <[hidden email]> wrote:

On Tuesday 18 May 2010 09:35:03 Julien Narboux wrote:
> This would remove the need for these labels, we would only need a way
> to say that the system is still busy loading the full size preview.

I think best would be some simple and clean way to notify the user that
the preview is simple one. And then offer in one click to load the full
size preview. I would not place the preview to be automatic in background
because we have situations like:

1. Laptops running on battery. Generating full size preview takes lots of
CPU.

2. There would need to be a loading animation what would give many a
exception to wait something to happend or feel that digiKam is slow. And
when suddenly the preview gets changed, it can feel somekind magic.

> What IMHO would be also nice to have in the thumbnail view is a
> reduction  of the empty space.

Those should take only in place when user has configured the UI to be
without tags, comments, rating or file name. I had a understanding from
your idea that the space would be generated automatically. Like if the row
has no tags, then that row is closer to other rows, what might have tags?

In that case (if I did not misunderstand) the UI would look very weird.
Some photos would have big space around them and some would not. The
thumbnailview would look more like loose post stamp book than photo album.

The one great usability effect the current grid layout is that is all the
times same size and eyes has easy to follow the thumbnails when there is
not different spaces.

> -4- maybe the mouseover buttons to rotate and select and give stars
> could be above the thumbnail.

Rotate and select should be above thumbnail. But rating should be under.
Example in touchscreens, you can rotate and select without seeing the
thumbnail. But rating can change even then when just placing rating. And
it is normal to see what you point. On rotating you already have made the

> -5- the size of the thumbnails could be ajusted such that it divides the
> width of the thumbview, the selector for thumbnail size would be changed
> to a selector for the number of thumbnail per row.

That could be nice thing. It just would fix the problem with the right
side what can leave bigger space if there is just not space for a
thumbnail. But it is depending the size of the sidepanel.

And that might depend lots of the thumbnail resizing functions. Would the
thumbnails be needed to be generated again if scaling the sidepanel or
hiding/showing it?

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--
Aditya Bhatt
Blog : http://adityabhatt.wordpress.com
Bitbucket: http://bitbucket.org/aditya_bhatt
Face Recognition Library : http://libface.sourceforge.net

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I find this information useful, too. But I don't want it to be written over my
image. This is so distracting that I'd rather turn off this feature than use  
it.
Why not simple put this information in the window title (like a lot of
applications do) or in the statusbar?

http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/5416/new2i.png

I know we discussed this before (without a result though), but why those
overlay icons?
I'd say they are totally useless.
1. we already have navigation icons in the statusbar
2. we can go back to iconview by clicking the image
3. although rotating images might be a task from time to time, it is a rather
seldom task nowadays. And even if I want to rotate my images like crazy (:-)),
I can simply put the rotation actions in the toolbar (see the above
screenshot).

All I can say is that I know a lot of people that really hate the look of
digiKam 1.2.0 and they use Gwenview for viewing their images now.
The design we have right now is really confusing and overloaded.
Putting the text label in the window title (or statusbar) and removing the
icon completely would help so much.


Andi Clemens
-----------------
www.digikam.org

On Tuesday 18 May 2010 08:42:27 Gilles Caulier wrote:

> 2010/5/18 Andi Clemens <[hidden email]>:
> > In my opinion the second one has several ideas that are not valid, at
> > least for me:
> >
> > 1. You already can display only the filename if you want to, and display
> > all the other information in the tooltip
> >
> > 2. Moving the search bar for the folder view into the status bar is very
> > confusing, because now you don't see their relation anymore. You have two
> > lineinput fields beside each other, both entitled with "search".
> >
> > 3. Remove one marble icon: Hmm these are two different panels. We should
> > either add a magnifying glass two the left marble icon or create a
> > totally new icon, but removing it is wrong. But maybe I misunderstood
> > his point, and he was really only talking about the icon, not the panel.
> >
> >
> > About the first screenshot:
> > I already said that we need an option to turn off those overlays,
> > especially the "full size preview" label. They are very annoying. I
> > already read complains in some Linux forum that the new digiKam became
> > "ugly" and that it throws annoying information at you :-) ...and that we
> > don't go the KDE way, that allows to configure your application the way
> > you want....
> >
> > Well anyway the first screenshot is basically a visual improvement, I
> > think it is ok. But we definitely need to provide an option to turn
> > those overlays off again.
>
> The preview widget is under porting to pure Qt4 by Marcel in GSoC
> devel branch. After that we can add an option somewhere in Control
> panel to switch on/off this annotation.
>
> For a lots of users which use raw, this annotation is important,
> especially to learn the program, and to know that we can load jpeg
> preview or Raw image data in preview area. The result is different and
> confuse users if no information is given. i remember a lots of report
> in user ML about this subject.
>
> About Forum, i read a lots of report about F-spot which is better than
> digiKam. F-spot is more easy to handle than digiKam. Perhaps, but
> digiKam is more pro like iface. Also, let's me use f-spot more than 5
> mns, and i can crash it very quickly. This project is not serious for
> me.
>
> Gilles
> _______________________________________________
> Digikam-devel mailing list
> [hidden email]
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-devel

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Forgot to say that the "back to icon view" is also duplicated information. We
already have this icon in the standard toolbar layout: "View".

Andi Clemens
-----------------
www.digikam.org

On Saturday 22 May 2010 08:23:25 Andi Clemens wrote:

> I find this information useful, too. But I don't want it to be written over
> my image. This is so distracting that I'd rather turn off this feature
> than use it.
> Why not simple put this information in the window title (like a lot of
> applications do) or in the statusbar?
>
> http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/5416/new2i.png
>
> I know we discussed this before (without a result though), but why those
> overlay icons?
> I'd say they are totally useless.
> 1. we already have navigation icons in the statusbar
> 2. we can go back to iconview by clicking the image
> 3. although rotating images might be a task from time to time, it is a
> rather seldom task nowadays. And even if I want to rotate my images like
> crazy (:-)), I can simply put the rotation actions in the toolbar (see the
> above screenshot).
>
> All I can say is that I know a lot of people that really hate the look of
> digiKam 1.2.0 and they use Gwenview for viewing their images now.
> The design we have right now is really confusing and overloaded.
> Putting the text label in the window title (or statusbar) and removing the
> icon completely would help so much.
>
>
> Andi Clemens
> -----------------
> www.digikam.org
>
> On Tuesday 18 May 2010 08:42:27 Gilles Caulier wrote:
> > 2010/5/18 Andi Clemens <[hidden email]>:
> > > In my opinion the second one has several ideas that are not valid, at
> > > least for me:
> > >
> > > 1. You already can display only the filename if you want to, and
> > > display all the other information in the tooltip
> > >
> > > 2. Moving the search bar for the folder view into the status bar is
> > > very confusing, because now you don't see their relation anymore. You
> > > have two lineinput fields beside each other, both entitled with
> > > "search".
> > >
> > > 3. Remove one marble icon: Hmm these are two different panels. We
> > > should either add a magnifying glass two the left marble icon or
> > > create a totally new icon, but removing it is wrong. But maybe I
> > > misunderstood his point, and he was really only talking about the
> > > icon, not the panel.
> > >
> > >
> > > About the first screenshot:
> > > I already said that we need an option to turn off those overlays,
> > > especially the "full size preview" label. They are very annoying. I
> > > already read complains in some Linux forum that the new digiKam became
> > > "ugly" and that it throws annoying information at you :-) ...and that
> > > we don't go the KDE way, that allows to configure your application the
> > > way you want....
> > >
> > > Well anyway the first screenshot is basically a visual improvement, I
> > > think it is ok. But we definitely need to provide an option to turn
> > > those overlays off again.
> >
> > The preview widget is under porting to pure Qt4 by Marcel in GSoC
> > devel branch. After that we can add an option somewhere in Control
> > panel to switch on/off this annotation.
> >
> > For a lots of users which use raw, this annotation is important,
> > especially to learn the program, and to know that we can load jpeg
> > preview or Raw image data in preview area. The result is different and
> > confuse users if no information is given. i remember a lots of report
> > in user ML about this subject.
> >
> > About Forum, i read a lots of report about F-spot which is better than
> > digiKam. F-spot is more easy to handle than digiKam. Perhaps, but
> > digiKam is more pro like iface. Also, let's me use f-spot more than 5
> > mns, and i can crash it very quickly. This project is not serious for
> > me.
> >
> > Gilles
> > _______________________________________________
> > Digikam-devel mailing list
> > [hidden email]
> > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-devel
>
> _______________________________________________
> Digikam-devel mailing list
> [hidden email]
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-devel

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