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Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

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Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

#41

Post by et1337 »

echelon wrote: post #26
skrebbel wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Universal search in UI is cool, and I’m all for it, but it shouldn’t be the only/primary way of accessing tools as tool discoverability is very low. This is the core point made in the article.

How do you support discoverability, sleek work areas with minimal interfaces such as search, and power users at the same time? What does that look like?

Look at the Blender UI. Every command is searchable via F3, available via menus, and sometimes also available via a keyboard shortcut.

Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

#42

Post by derefr »

echelon wrote: post #26
skrebbel wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Universal search in UI is cool, and I’m all for it, but it shouldn’t be the only/primary way of accessing tools as tool discoverability is very low. This is the core point made in the article.

How do you support discoverability, sleek work areas with minimal interfaces such as search, and power users at the same time? What does that look like?

It looks like having multiple selectable interface layouts for different types of user with different discoverability needs. Photoshop does this.

Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

#43

Post by evbogue »

renewiltord wrote: post #10

The one thing I can say is that fuzzy search like IntelliJ is a really good interface for experienced workflow. Maybe an AI fuzzy search would help with discoverability.

I was thinking this would be a good use case for AI. Perhaps you could have a Gimp co-pilot that makes suggestions about what you could do with the image after uploading it to a server somewhere.

Then we would know if the AI is more or less intelligent based on whether it can actually figure out how to find that specific blur function within all of the various dropdowns and sub-menus.

Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

#44

Post by bitwize »

capableweb wrote: post #4
superkuh wrote: post #2

GIMP is still a Gtk2 program.

It's still ironic to me that the program that GTK was made for and that popularized the toolkit, haven't managed to move to its latest version yet.

While GTK started off as the GIMP Toolkit, it has since become the GNOME Toolkit, so it doesn't really track GIMP's needs anymore.

Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

#45

Post by eviks »

torstenvl wrote: post #13

This is a terrible idea. The menu bar works great, integrates with shortcuts, and gives 100% discoverability. Anyone who wants to get rid of it is a bad developer and a bad person.

how is discoverability 100% if you

- can't search

- don't have 100% functionality

Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

#48

Post by sparkie »

echelon wrote: post #26
skrebbel wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Universal search in UI is cool, and I’m all for it, but it shouldn’t be the only/primary way of accessing tools as tool discoverability is very low. This is the core point made in the article.

How do you support discoverability, sleek work areas with minimal interfaces such as search, and power users at the same time? What does that look like?

Menus with lots of options, properly labelled and organized, and displaying keyboard shortcuts next to them, like pretty much any software written in the 90s. Tooltips when you hover over things. Actual documentation built into the software rather than tucked away in a man page or only found in a forum you discovered by searching for your problem.

I don't think it's power users these designers are trying to cater for. They make things more difficult for power users by hiding useful options in some tab in a modal settings dialog, which is a PITA to find and click if you need to change it often. Often they remove something completely from the UI and you need to go find the config file and manually edit some text and restart the program to get functionality back.

They're trying to cater for novices - they think too many controls on display is going to confuse or overwhelm them. I blame Barry Schwartz[1]

If they were trying to cater for power users they would let power users configure their interfaces to suit them. Modern interfaces are "fixed" in the image of the designer, and screw you, the user.

[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice

Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

#49

Post by IshKebab »

Tao3300 wrote: post #5

> [Search] kinda works when you generally know what you need or how a feature you want could be called I mean, that's how I feel using the GIMP menus. I never know where anything is, and my first guess is usually wrong.

The worst is Inkscape. They somehow manage to put every option in the last place I look.

Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?

#50

Post by genman »

rebuilder wrote: post #18
wredue wrote: post #8

I will forever be against weird “hidden” menus and even more against the idiotic replacing of clear, obvious text based menuing with bullshit, stupid, mentally handicapped “just memorize what our developers decided these images mean lol Hurr durr”. Absolutely hate this redesign. The correct response to a “too small viewport” for anyone serious is to buy a better monitor with a larger resolution, not to redesign menus…

A sufficiently complex menu is not really that discoverable, either - you end up having to memorize what category the devs have decided to file a particular function under.

Gimp menu system is reasonably logical (except perhaps some minor exceptions like having options under edit menu (but this is also problem with most of the programs)).
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