Re: GUI design of 0.7

[Joel Biddier]

Bernhard Reiter wrote:

> Terms:
>
> When reading about "Panel" I got reminded of "Inspectors".
> What I have liked a lot in NextStep was, that most
> GUI's were designed having an inspector for the object that was selected.
> The inspector was a panel that could be placed on the screen and stayed there
> only changing it contents when you selected a different object.
> To me this catches the nature of graphic objects with properties nicely.
>  
Do you mean an properties panel (information only) or properties panel 
in which you can change the state of an object.

> MDI vs. SDI
>
> I never liked the CSDI nor the MDI-in-one-window, because
> CSDI gives the disadvantages described and MDI-in-one-window seems
> to make up for bad window managing.  
> In Nextstep, the MDI actually worked; they let tools and inspectors
> relate to the active window.
> Actually the solutation put forward is close to the NextStep way
> and I support it. I suggest looking at GnuStep and add a panel listing
> the open documents, that can easily placed somewhere.
>  
I'm rather neutral on this matter. Other than if you go MDI (Gimp style) 
open a blank window on start-up. This gives the impression of SDI. This 
impression will be lost when you close the window (or inadvertently 
close the toolbar)  - it is then obvious it is MDI.

> Graphic Design:
>
> (The naming of the section could be improved I guess, because it about
> finding a good method of organising the work bench.)
>
> I think that the grouping in your examples is not too bad.
> It started me thinking about the four icons 
> for the foreground background settings.
> They use quite some space and we could try to represent it smaller.
> My Idea:
> What about a small "panel" that display the situation 
> of the currently selected object. (This can be an object or a layer, btw)
> Then the mouse (and the mouse wheel) could be used to drag the object 
> up and down. The user experience can be improved in showing the real stack
> situation. So if there are only three layers at this point, then we only
> present three layers and not four like in the icons currently.
>
>  

> Property Panels:
>
>         I agree that property panel window resizes should be avoided.
>         In reference to the inspector model it might be interesting to think
>         about representing the propteries of one object in one window
>         with tabs and not having three windows which might not apply to all
>         objects.
>  
More power to the tab concept.

Well, lunch is over I'm out for the next 5 hours.

Have a good one!

--J