Andrew <rugby471@...360...> writes:
You can see my findings and my suggestion on the Wiki, but to entice you to read it, the mockup is here :)
http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Fill_and_Stroke_Dialog_Re-Design http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/File:Solution-fillandstrokedialog.pn...
Thanks and I would love to hear your comments!
I'm not a developer, just a user (and a UI enthusiast). You are correct in that the dialog is too cluttered but you're wrong on some details. Let;s begin with the fact that fill/stroke is not a window, it's a dockable inside a window. This means you can drag the gray bar at the top and move the dockable elsewhere, such as to the main window - or to another window which aleady has a dockable. At that point the window has two dockables and the window title changes to "dock #3" or something similar and no longer reflects the contents of the dockable. So, while ugly, the bar is necessary. If you want to solve this issue you'll need to find a different tack. Sadly GTK seems to not be very flexible so don't expect that to change soon.
Now here's another issue where your design is problematic: You chose to turn the paint / gradient / pattern selector to a drop-down list, while changing the color mode tabs to a button row. Now, a button row takes a single click to change modes, while a drop-down list takes two. So, obviously, we would like to have the buttons for the more commonly used option, and the drop-down for the less used command. I don't know about you, but I use these buttons ALL THE TIME. As for color mode, I rarely change it at all. To me it makes no sense to give it so much space and skimp on the buttons. It would slow my work considerably. If anything, move the color mode to a drop down. The buttons have to stay.
Lastly, a general note: you seem to aim for beginner / casual users. I believe in the case of Inkscape this is not the right audience. this is a vector editor, and most casual users aren't really interested in such an application. Inkscape is a professional grade program - at least for certain uses - and your redesing would seriously detract from its usability.