[Gimp-developer] [GIMP] Suggestion to simplify user interaction

[gg at catking.net]

On Fri, 13 Oct 2006 12:15:51 +0200, Øyvind Kolås <pippin at gimp.org> wrote:

> On 10/12/06, Philip Ganchev <phil.ganchev at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi.
>>
>> I have a suggestion for a new and simple way to interact with GIMP.
>>
>> A major difficulty in using GIMP, in my experience, is that the menus
>> are too many and too deep.  To invoke an action on an image, or to
>> open a dialog box, the user spends a lot of time and concentration
>> navigating the menus, usually with the mouse.  And, despite best
>> efforts to organize the menus, finding the right item for the
>> operation you want can be difficult.
>>
>> A more efficient alternative would be to let the user try to express
>> his intention more freely, and show him a menu of options that might
>> be what he wants.  This is in effect search for the right command, and
>> the user sees the list of options *as he types*.  A command is any
>> conventional menu item or folder in the current menu hierarchy.
>
> I guess you should have a menu or a similar interface in addition/tandem  
> with
> a query interface. I have implemented a similar solution in my
> prototypes of more advanced layer interfaces and added one more thing,
> items can exist in multiple locations in the menu system with the aim
> to make it easier finding what you are looking for when only browsing
> the menu as well.
>
> http://pippin.gimp.org/tmp/search-menu.gif contains a recorded
> animation of the UI elements I've been using.
>
> /Øyvind K.

I also find as a user that menus often go too deep.

One sub-menu is acceptable , two starts to get unwieldy. Eg. I ofter copy  
a selection and Paste As New , this is three levels deep. I'd like to see  
this at the same level as Cut:  Cut | Paste | Paste as New. I crated a  
hot-key as a work around but as others have said , I would rather keep my  
eyes on the screen except for typing numbers etc.


Another improvement would to clean up some menus. The Blur menu seems to  
contain several, largely equivalent filters. Two would suffice and could  
be incorporated into Enhance.

I also created a bug about making sure sub-menus did not jump from one  
side to the other. This is appalling from a usability point of view but  
the comment did not get a very positive response.


Sometimes "logical grouping" of functions takes precedence over usability.  
Some real basics like flip and rotating an image to straighten it up  
should be on the image menu.

Some anomolies could be looked at, I can free-rotate a layer but not an  
image.

Colors | Retinex  ?? What's that supposed to tell the user? It seems to be  
an enhancment filter to me.


Making the menus a bit more usable may reduce the calls for a replacement.

my-2c


/gg