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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Yet another desktop BG dialog
From:       Keunwoo Lee <klee () cs ! washington ! edu>
Date:       2003-02-20 4:48:57
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Recently stumbled across the following GNOME usability report:

http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/ut1_report/customization_tasks.html

See "Desktop > Background Capplet".  The KDE 3.1 desktop background
dialog, and the mockups posted to kde-usability in the past couple of
months, share the problem pointed out in the report: namely, the modal
relationship between "wallpaper" and "color" is not clear.

Attached (bgdialog3.ui.gz) is a quick and dirty mockup of a suggested
alternative design.  I don't have all the connections wired up right, but
the tabs (and the "Customize blend" button) should be selectively disabled
based on the state of the radio buttons in the "Background mode" box.

Screencaps from Qt Designer:

http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/klee/kde/YetAnotherBGDialog-3a.png
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/klee/kde/YetAnotherBGDialog-3b.png

Note the following:

+ This design makes the modalities of the background setting explicit.  
Both picture/color/blended and "single image"/"slide show" under "picture"
are mutually exclusive.

+ Exactly the same language is used for the tabs and the mode radio
buttons, to clarify the relationship between them.

+ This design hides away the custom blending settings in a separate
dialog, which reduces clutter somewhat.  Given that (I'm guessing) people
use blending much more rarely than either image or color, I think this is
a good tradeoff.

Disadvantages/rough edges:

- The dialog is still more cluttered than I would like.

- To be really correct we should also have a modal selector for
enabling/disabling the secondary color under the "Color and pattern" tab.  
Not sure about the best way to do this though.

For greater logical consistency, this dialog could have "External program"
as one of the radio buttons under background mode, because this is also
mutually exclusive with the other modes.  The result takes up more space
and looks even more cluttered, but I've attached an alternative .ui file
(bgdialog5.ui.gz) that demos it.  Screencap:

http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/klee/kde/YetAnotherBGDialog-5a.png

Again, these .ui files are rough.  I'm probably violating some guidelines,
and there's no "What's This" etc.  If people find the basic idea sound,
someone who actually knows what (s)he is doing will have to refine it and
do it right.

BTW, IMO the blending, pattern, and external program options are esoteric
enough that kdesktop would not suffer too much if you dropped them
entirely.  Any user who wants to run xearth as their background can figure
out how to do it him/herself.  Plus, how many people use background
blending or patterns?  If it's around 1%, then is it worth uglifying the
control panel for the sake of these features?  People who are extremely
obsessive about their background image can fire up the GIMP and roll their
own.  I recognize that, politically speaking, it's hard to drop
functionality like this, but that's my $0.02.

I'm not on the usability list, just an interested bystander, so please cc:
on replies.

~k

-- 
GPG public key id: 0x5CFD1761 (available on a key server near you)

["bgdialog3.ui.gz" (APPLICATION/X-GZIP)]
["bgdialog5.ui.gz" (APPLICATION/X-GZIP)]
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