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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Designing improved character selector
From:       "Parker Coates" <pcoates3 () uwo ! ca>
Date:       2007-03-01 2:52:41
Message-ID: 85d347350702281852r258bc601n5315f803cfa417fb () mail ! gmail ! com
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KCharSelect is definitely in need of some improvement, so I looking
forward to seeing what you can do with it. I just installed Gucharmap
to try it out. For the most part it's a pretty good interface and just
duplicating it would be a major improvement. I do, however, see a few
areas for improvement.

Firstly, I have to agree with Hans about the tabs. They clutter the
interface and interupt work flow. "Character Details" would be better
served by being placed in an optional pane on the right hand side.
When being run as its own application, there's no shortage of space,
so showing a details pane by default probably makes sense. (This would
also remove the need for the status bar-like thing below character
table.) If used as a widget in another application, hide the details
pane and stick the most relevant information into a really big
tooltip.

The Character Details should show a really huge preview of the character.

Displaying the "Alt + ####" shortcuts is also extremely handy, where available.

Drag and drop would increase efficiency a zillion-fold.

I'm not sure about the toolbox widget. While it technically seems like
an efficient way to display a bunch of widgets in a small space, I was
find them awkward to use in practice. Perhaps you would be better
served by an Amarok/KDevelop/Kaffeine style vertical tab bar (but
those have their own usability worries).

I understand Aaron's point about getting rid of the left side widgets
altogether to minimise the screen footprint, but I feel that would
make the application version feel crowded. What's good for the
application isn't necessarily what's good for the widget and vice
versa.

For example, someone running KCharSelect (the app) is much more likely
to browse around. In such a case having a list of scripts/blocks makes
it much easier to know where you are/where you've been. Someone using
it as an embedded widget would likely already know what character they
want and roughly where to find it. In such a case a combobox of
scripts/groups would be just as fast and the user would likely benefit
from the savings in screen space. But of course the bigger the
differences between the app and the widget the more work for the
author/maintainer.

Best of luck and keep us posted,

Parker


On 2/28/07, Daniel Laidig <d.laidig@gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've been working on adding unicode information to KDE's character selector.
> This includes character names, related characters and category information.
> The idea was to create something more or less like gucharmap (see
> http://live.gnome.org/Gucharmap).
>
> I've been thinking about how to integrate this features in the character
> selector, which includes the standalone app KCharSelect as well as the widget
> used by other apps such as Konversation.
>
> IMHO the current state of the character selector is quite unusable. You can
> select a font and one of 255 tables, which contain 255 characters each.
> Unless you know the exact table number it's quite hard to find the character
> you are looking for. And how many of you know that the infinity sign is in
> table 34? ;)
>
> I've created a mockup how the character selector could look like. The concept
> is to have a left area where you can select a script, a block or perform a
> search. The script, block or search result is shown in the table on the
> right. Additionally, some useful information can be displayed for the selected
> character.
>
> http://img501.imageshack.us/img501/8268/kcharselectmockup1rs8.png
> http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/2340/kcharselectmockup2td8.png
> http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/1921/kcharselectmockup3lh4.png
>
> However, I don't have any experience with usability, so I'm posting this
> here. :)
>
> What do you think of this mockup? (Please note that this is a mockup and the
> actual table is just a placeholder.) Do you have any suggestions?
>
> Thank you!
> Daniel
> _______________________________________________
> kde-usability mailing list
> kde-usability@kde.org
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-usability
>
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