[Gimp-developer] no image open spec...

[Thorsten Wilms]

On Mon, 2008-02-04 at 09:01 +0100, Sven Neumann wrote:

> I also very much wonder why the window should have something as useless
> as a slider to control the visual appearance but lack any useful widgets
> to give people quick access to the things they will most likely do next.
> What's wrong about a link to the recently used images and to the New
> image dialog?

Same here.

I think such a slider would be a waste of both developer and user time
(a _million_ users wondering: ooh, what does this slider do? ... to
never touch it again ;)

Reasons against having Recent/New in the window:
- "visual noise"
- both are in the file menu already and duplication would lessen
consistency in interaction / work against habituation.

But then I would prefer a window as narrow as possible, not much more
than just a title and a menu bar. Any image would get old soon and
putting effort into exchanging it frequently would be wasted.

Reasons for having Recent/New in the window:
- fast access to the only 2 things a user might want to do (well,
there's also accessing preferences)
- avoiding a mostly empty window which will trigger uncountable
complaints through all eternity ;)

The audio application Ardour has a startup dialog with New and Open
Recent tabs. The dialog has its issues, but feels very useful. I never
use a file manager to open a project there. For GIMP, it should be
possible to have New and Recent side by side.


-- 
Thorsten Wilms

thorwil's design for free software:
http://thorwil.wordpress.com/