On Wed, 2007-09-05 at 18:28 -0300, bulia byak wrote:
Consider also that, if you accept my plan, the default opened state of an extension dialog will allow you to change selection. And this is an aspect which will make the extension dialogs a lot more like all others, so it is an important improvement.
While I don't disagree with anything that you've said, I'm concerned that we're stepping away from the conventional interaction that users expect. I'd like to discuss that a little -- I feel that if we're going to change things this drastically it deserves the attention.
I feel like the previous (0.45) interaction was a pretty standard one. Basically someone clicks on a menu, gets some options, changes those, and then changes the document based on those settings. It then disappears.
We also have dialogs that are more related to adjusting properties of objects. So, for instance, you can change the fill and stroke styles of an object by using the fill and stroke dialog.
So, in essence we'd be mixing these modes to create a dialog that would appear upon selecting a menu item -- but would remain as you continue to work with the document. It is less of an "OK" check box coming up and more of a palette.
Now I think one thing that bothers me is the idea that there could be hundreds of new palettes created by doing this. Every effect would have it's own. Does it make sense to have an "Effects Palette" instead? Something like this:
+----------------------+ | Effect Selector | | ------------------ | | | | Effect | | Specific | | Prefs | | | | ------------------ | | [x] Live Preview | | ------------------ | | | Apply | +----------------------+
You can then keep the dialog open at all times, using it for different effects, but we don't end up with dialog overload. It would also make it very easy to use the same effect repetitively.
Do the "perception speedups" that I added make enabling preview by default seem reasonable to you?
I guess the answer is no, although I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "perception speedups" :)
Sorry, should have explained :) No there is more events taken into account in large documents so there should be less locking of the UI. Also, rapid changing of preferences doesn't cause the live preview to be re-rendered immediately -- there is a short timeout. This fixes the problem of holding down a spin button (especially on large docs).
--Ted