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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: Color selection widget
From:       Thomas Zander <zander () kde ! org>
Date:       2007-05-25 20:07:54
Message-ID: 200705252207.55153.zander () kde ! org
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On Friday 25 May 2007 19:19:34 Casper Boemann wrote:
> The requirements I have for the new widget is:
>
> 1) It should be the same widget that we use all over KOffice.
>
> 2) It should provide the user with a one-click method to set the color
> of the selected text, cell, frame, "current color".  At least if the
> color is one of the frequently used once
>
> 3) It should provide the user with a way to select a custom color
>
> 4)It should allow the user to create a collection of colors  (a so
> called swatch)
>
> 5) It should handle several sets of swatches.

Apart from point 1, these are rather random looking requirements. At least 
half of them I am not at all sure are actually on my requirements list. 
And I am sure that this long list will make the widget a lot more 
complicated.

I want to suggest a different approach of reaching a better design 
(instead of just recreating what was done before).  Write several use 
cases of what you expect users to do, rate them in importance and 
possibly let those use cases introduce new user-interface elements (like 
a swatch).

At that point everyone is at a level playing field on what this should do 
and we can have some informed decisions about which features and 
requirements the end result should have, and how they should be ranked in 
importance.

One thing that always annoyed me with the current widget is that the 
pre-defined colors are pretty random and quite useless in many cases.
I have a great book about color-theory and it shows the idea that of color 
value. Where having a background and foreground color which have a to 
similar color value give an unreadable result.
With that concept in mind we can show a more educated dialog and remove a 
large body of color-suggestions from the UI (less cluter) and effectively 
provide a much better user experience with minimal effort.

Anyway, thats just one example. Bottom line is that I'd like to see such a 
discussion and design session before we write up a quite finished design 
like your mail provided.

Cheers!
-- 
Thomas Zander

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