[Digikam-devel] [Bug 225471] Change Digikam to follow usability guidelines

[Supreme1012]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=225471





--- Comment #6 from Supreme1012 <supreme1012 gmail com>  2010-02-08 05:13:26 ---
I added a new screenshot showing the "Tags" sidepanel. Please check it over and
let me know what you think!


Here's my responses to Fri Duh's last post:

"The horizontal space is not the problem."

You say this because the way the options currently are presented means that the
sidepanels have long lists of features and options. Im working on consolidating
the sidepanels so that there is plenty of room, and having more horizontal
space means more space for viewing your photos, or for when you have two images
side by side like with Light Room.

"User can hide the [current] toolbar and is not forced to have it."

I disagree. With my design you can press a button, hit shortcut keys, or use
the menu to remove the sidepanels completely, but the way it is currently for
Digikam the toolbar on the left and right sides of the screen always take up
space.

"c) Two buttons less in the toolbar (there is space problem on smaller screens
when toolbars having a text side)."

Small screens are in no way Digikams target market. But besides which, having
it display as "Icons only" will show only two small icons on each side, and if
you'll notice, I changed around the toolbar so that its showing the most
commonly used controls and this takes up less space than Digikam's current
Toolbar.

"d) Possibility to have a tabs on top of current tools (tabs like Exif, XMP
etc)."

If designed right, extra tabs should not be needed. But I will grant that
having all that extra space to stick things is nice, its just not very user
friendly or well designed.

"That is one thing what I am suggesting for current setup, that we move as much
possible some functions in showFoto to up."

That's good! After making the mockups I believe that having the search and
filter bars at the top really helps make things look better and more consistent
with the rest of KDE.

"And the current sidepanel implentation is not liked by some people because one
small problem, the text is sideway and while trying to find out a way to get
rid of that, we end up to have bigger problems. Sometimes it is wiser to have a
small problem to gain bigger features somewhere else."

Just because the solution hasnt been found yet doesnt mean it cant be fixed! Im
very optimistic about this. I know I'm receiving literally no support but I
have pretty clear ideas about how this could work, and work really well and
I'll continue to make more mockups to show the developers a way to work out the
mess.

"The tag tree is powerfull because you can see the available tags. The
filtering is to help when you already remember/know what you are looking for."

Please check out my most recent screenshot that shows how the "Tags" sidepanel
could work at both managing tags as well as filtering through them. Please let
me know what you think.

"And both tags bars on left and right have different functions on them. The
left side is like selecting single information. A one tag, one album, one map
location or one date. On the right side you get the information but the tag is
cloned there to allow you manage the filtered data what you got from left
search. 

The Left sidepanel is for finding and selecting images. The Right sidepanel is
for viewing and manipulating the images properties (eg: tags, metadata,
caption, crop, red-eye). My design is the same basic goal as Digikam's, but its
presented in a clearer way, while still maintaining all of the same functions. 

"Example you have tags of every person by their name. Then you have renamed
files to have names of the persons. Then there is map places and albums with
same kind names. Now if you search in one "superbar" search a wanted tag or
person. You get everything in front of you.We should make some kind of drop
down list or selection that allows user to choose what data it will be
searched."

That is why the Albums tab searches through your folders, and the Places tab
will search through your locations and the Tag tab on the right will let you
search through your tags. The "Search Bar" will be configurable to decide what
results get displayed, but sometimes you want to find ALL of those things in
the same place, and the "superbar" would make this possible as well as simple.
Thank you for the idea of configuring the Search results though, I will add
that into my mockups.

This is one problem what caused that we need to have a normal search and a
advanced search separated.

"You do a location search on left by dragging a box around wanted area. Now you
get all that area photos in front of you. How do you filter just one person
from the massive amount of photos?"

You can enter their name in the search and it will filter the "Places" results
to show the photos of that person by filename, tag, or metadata. Or if you're
using tags for people, you can click on the tag representing them and get the
photos that way. You keep saying "to find people" but currently Digikam doesnt
have special controls for people in images. Are you saving peoples names as
tags and searching for them in your tags? Is that what you mean?

"simple and powerfull tools what I can mix together"

Powerful is right! I love Digikam's features, but it is not anywhere near
simple. And I'm working on designing them to work even more closely together,
with less panels and windows and clearer menus and controls.

"That is good thing what you are doing. And discussing about them is good so
that we can find new ideas and solutions what to think."

And thank you for your feedback! I've already made several changes based off
your comments. Please continue to let me know if you see anything that you
think would not work or work well.

"Yes it still would be but as I tried to explain, the functionality to use the
features would change, even thet the UI itself would not be changed"

Functionality is what I'm working towards. Changes do take a second to adapt
to, but good changes can make adapting worth it.

"That is one current big problem. We have two sidepanels with both having great
functionality and supporting each other (as I explained) and just having one
tool (like tags) to do everything in one place (only one tag panel/tab with
mixed functuons) is not always the best choice."

The best choice is what I'm trying to find. Look over what I did with the
"Tags" panel and tell me what you think. I believe that I have successfully
combined the functionality of the two current sidepanels into the one "Tags"
tab.

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