Created attachment 5763 Glade 2 file This report is against v 4.11/trunk. 1. Please make the window larger by default so more wallpapers are visible, and slightly reduce the spacing between wallpapers / increase their size so they can be seen a bit better 2. Please make it possible to view the contents of several folders at the same time so I can browse through two or three concurrent wallpaper folders. Maybe it'd be better to aggregate useful sources of wallpapers and have a single button on the main UI that goes to a "Wallpaper Sources" dialog? That dialog should have a list of used folders, and Add/Remove/Reset to default/Close buttons 3. Please load the "/usr/share/backgrounds" and "/usr/share/backgrounds/xfce" folders, as well as their .local/share counterparts by default to the wallpaper sources. 4. Remove the "None" style, replace it with two pixmaps automatically emulated into the wallpaper list: a "Color only" one and a "No wallpaper" one. Tooltips: "Lets you select a color or gradient to use as a wallpaper" and "Lets you use another program to set your wallpaper". Note the "No wallpaper" option doesn't appear to have many use cases, it should really appear last in the list. 5. If an image is selected, set "Style" to sensitive and "Color to insensitive". If a color is selected, reverse. Note it might look better to show/hide instead of setting to sensitive. I think both options are acceptable. 6. Rename "Wallpaper for my desktop" to "Default wallpaper"? and use that Default wallpaper for new workspaces? 7. Add the following text to the infobar when modifying workspaces one by one: "New workspaces will use <explain new workspace wallpaper logic here.>" 8. Make sure that the default style is well applied. Right now new workspaces default to "Stretch", they should default to the style of the default/global wallpaper. 9. Separate the options into more clearly spread out groups, to avoid confusions (e.g., Random and Apply to all workspaces seem linked) 10. Look up attached suggested design. Combo boxes fill as follows: Style [ same as now, except for none which is removed ], Color [ same as now ], Periodic Replacement [ Disabled (default), Next in Sources, Random in Sources, Next among selection, Random among selection ], every [ Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days, Weeks, Months, At start up (clarify what chronologically is, if it's too unclear best to remove ] 11. Let people select multiple wallpapers. When single wallpaper, set the last selected one, when cycling through selected wallpapers, use that information. There used to be a hidden feature to display a list of wallpapers periodically, it's better to implement it this way so it's visible to users. When the periodic change is set to something with "Selection", display the Multiple Selection infobar. Cheers
Created attachment 5764 Mockup of suggested changes
Brightness, gamma, saturation options have been lost with the redesign, yet they can be useful to turn a squishy photo into a decent wallpaper. They should be re-added with progressive disclosure.
I was just implementing the stuff in https://wiki.xfce.org/design/xfdesktop/settings so you may want to mark that as incomplete and take up the design decision with the other design members. I'll just make some notes here. If we're redoing the design, https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10329 report also wanted xfdesktop-settings to operate more like a wallpaper catalogue. 1. Please make the window larger by default so more wallpapers are visible, and slightly reduce the spacing between wallpapers / increase their size so they can be seen a bit better The default dialog size did increase from 4.10, I'd like to keep the minimum small so that it looks decent on low res netbook screens. If the user changes the dialog size it will be remembered next time. 2. Please make it possible to view the contents of several folders at the same time so I can browse through two or three concurrent wallpaper folders. Maybe it'd be better to aggregate useful sources of wallpapers and have a single button on the main UI that goes to a "Wallpaper Sources" dialog? That dialog should have a list of used folders, and Add/Remove/Reset to default/Close buttons 3. Please load the "/usr/share/backgrounds" and "/usr/share/backgrounds/xfce" folders, as well as their .local/share counterparts by default to the wallpaper sources. Multiple directories may be possible, it will probably add a little overhead as xfdesktop monitors the directory for changes so it doesn't try to display files that are gone and will show new files when they are added. It will also make the initial startup slower as it parses multiple directories. The bigger issue is the UI needed for how the user adds and removes those directories. You're mockup doesn't make that clear. 4. Remove the "None" style, replace it with two pixmaps automatically emulated into the wallpaper list: a "Color only" one and a "No wallpaper" one. Tooltips: "Lets you select a color or gradient to use as a wallpaper" and "Lets you use another program to set your wallpaper". Note the "No wallpaper" option doesn't appear to have many use cases, it should really appear last in the list. No wallpaper sounds like it may be an issue with multiple workspaces. If you only have workspace 1 set to no wallpaper and switch to wallpaper 2 then back to 1, the external program may not know it needs to redraw the wallpaper since it may just set the rootpixmap... something to test out at least. 11. Let people select multiple wallpapers. When single wallpaper, set the last selected one, when cycling through selected wallpapers, use that information. There used to be a hidden feature to display a list of wallpapers periodically, it's better to implement it this way so it's visible to users. When the periodic change is set to something with "Selection", display the Multiple Selection infobar. I don't understand this part at all. Why add a folder and only use a couple items from it? The user can just make a wallpaper folder and add symlinks to all the wallpapers they want (even from multiple directories). The file manager is better suited for these tasks. Brightness, gamma, saturation options have been lost with the redesign, yet they can be useful to turn a squishy photo into a decent wallpaper. They should be re-added with progressive disclosure. If we are bringing back the brightness/saturation sliders we will need to fix this bug as well: https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10531 Also the brightness/saturation is only useful for correcting one image, what happens if you want to cycle multiple? If the image is of poor quality why not use gimp and fix it rather than trying to correct it in xfdesktop? There was also a bug report asking to support individual settings per-wallpaper if you really want to go crazy.
Ad 1) Agree with Eric there. Ad 2-3) That sounds like a really bad idea. A lot of overhead for something you can easily achieve with a few symlinks if you really need it. Also needs a sensible UI implementation (I've thought about this for a while and even discussed in with Eric, I frankly don't see a good way to do this). Frankly, this is quite a wild collection of different suggestions that aren't necessarily linked, so why discuss them all in one bugreport? Also, xfdesktop is *not* an image editor. If your pictures suck, use one of those, they do a better job at improving your image anyway (just like file managers do a better job at collecting/organising images in folders). Just because the feature was there once doesn't mean it was a good idea in the first place and users have a "right" to it staying there.
> I was just implementing the stuff in https://wiki.xfce.org/design/xfdesktop/settings > so you may want to mark that as incomplete and take up the design decision with the > other design members. I'll just make some notes here. I'm doing a round of comments because I noticed a bunch of label and placement inconsistencies and some mutually exclusive options that can be used together, which could cause confusion on how to enable features. I'll comment below for the sake of conversation but would like to run a cognitive walkthrough of the UI. Further comments will be on the design page. >> 1. Please make the window larger by default so more wallpapers are visible, and >> [...] > > The default dialog size did increase from 4.10, I'd like to keep the minimum > small so that it looks decent on low res netbook screens. If the user changes > the dialog size it will be remembered next time. > Ad 1) Agree with Eric there. If we can get information on the screen resolution, we would be able to ensure we don't e.g. take more than 80% of the monitor's size but we can still provide a better overview of wallpapers on large monitors. If you think this would be a nice improvement, I can open a standalone report for this. >> 2. Please make it possible to view the contents of several folders at the same >> [...] >> 3. Please load the "/usr/share/backgrounds" and "/usr/share/backgrounds/xfce" >> [...] > > Multiple directories may be possible, it will probably add a little overhead as > xfdesktop monitors the directory for changes so it doesn't try to display files > that are gone and will show new files when they are added. It will also make > the initial startup slower as it parses multiple directories. The bigger issue > is the UI needed for how the user adds and removes those directories. You're > mockup doesn't make that clear. > Ad 2-3) That sounds like a really bad idea. A lot of overhead for something you > can easily achieve with a few symlinks if you really need it. Also needs a > sensible UI implementation (I've thought about this for a while and even > discussed in with Eric, I frankly don't see a good way to do this). The wallpaper sources button could take to a tiny dialog that just contains a list of scanned folders. I really don't think it's ok to tell users to manually find images and then create symbolic links. Some distros like to rename packages and move their content around, so we could end up with broken symlinks, but the main issue is that users will have to *find* where all images are (/usr/share/backgrounds, /usr/share/backdrops, /usr/share/backgrounds/xfce, their own photos) and create links one by one to get a view of all the potential wallpapers at the same time. Please do time yourselves doing it, I'm pretty sure it's not so trivial. My idea of a user wanting to decide what wallpaper they want to use is not that of a user wanting to do a lot of efforts, but click here and there and see the results immediately. >> 4. Remove the "None" style, replace it with two pixmaps automatically emulated >> [...] > > No wallpaper sounds like it may be an issue with multiple workspaces. If you > only have workspace 1 set to no wallpaper and switch to wallpaper 2 then back > to 1, the external program may not know it needs to redraw the wallpaper since > it may just set the rootpixmap... something to test out at least. Yup, I've run into that issue when doing initial testing. "None" cannot be implemented any better than by forcing a plain colour, so it probably should be called "Use color" or colours should be proposed in a different way. My issue is that if you're actively looking to use a colour as a wallpaper it's really not so clear you need to pick a wallpaper and "hack" its "style" to get access to colours. It'd feel more natural to "pick" a "colour wallpaper", in my opinion. >> 11. Let people select multiple wallpapers. When single wallpaper, set the last >> [...] > > I don't understand this part at all. Why add a folder and only use a couple > items from it? The user can just make a wallpaper folder and add symlinks to > all the wallpapers they want (even from multiple directories). The file manager > is better suited for these tasks. If I want to cycle through wallpapers, I now need to create a folder with symlinks to all of them, but I could as well just click on 2 or 3 wallpapers I like and have the desktop cycle through those. There used to be a list where the cycling wallpapers could be written, now I'm not sure how to get the same behaviour. My "cycling" wallpapers would contain Xubuntu/Ubuntu/Xfce wallpapers, GNOME wallpapers, my own wallpapers stored in a folder on my ~ and photos of my relatives. It takes a lot of moving things around to do this right now, *outside* the UI which is not so intuitive (I'm tempted to think it's just not possible, symlinks had actually not come to my mind until you two suggested it), because I can no longer open files from different locations in the UI as I used to. >> Brightness, gamma, saturation options have been lost with the redesign, yet >> [...] > > If we are bringing back the brightness/saturation sliders we will need to fix > this bug as well: https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10531 > Also the brightness/saturation is only useful for correcting one image, what happens if > you want to cycle multiple? If the image is of poor quality why not use gimp > and fix it rather than trying to correct it in xfdesktop? There was also a bug > report asking to support individual settings per-wallpaper if you really want > to go crazy. My dream feature: Right click image, tweak brightness/saturation, get a dialog/popover, tweak the image, see the difference. Other images not affected. Took me 10 seconds. Current workflow: Boot up GIMP, find where the image is and open it, change the image, *save it into a writable folder, switch the Wallpaper UI to that folder, select the image, switch the UI back to the original folder to compare with the original and with other candidate wallpapers, switch again to the writable folder or go back to GIMP to re-change the settings**. Took me several minutes even if I know what I'm doing. At the very least we could add a right click menu to images to open the folder where they are/load them up in the image editor to help with the first steps? Note that also getting support for multiple source directories would dramatically ease the current workflow. > Frankly, this is quite a wild collection of different suggestions that aren't > necessarily linked, so why discuss them all in one bugreport? Sorry about this. The issue is a lot of the comments are linked to changing the same UI and (re-)adding support for multiple directories, so it felt harder to mention things separately and make you guys navigate through 12 reports to comment. > Also, xfdesktop is *not* an image editor. If your pictures suck, use one of > those, they do a better job at improving your image anyway (just like file > managers do a better job at collecting/organising images in folders). Just > because the feature was there once doesn't mean it was a good idea in the first > place and users have a "right" to it staying there. The problem is, if I do this I have to copy/paste all of /usr/share/back* images into a writable folder before I can start hoping to have a unified view of my wallpapers with the current UI. If it was as easy to add wallpapers to the list as it was in 4.10, and if I was nudged/helped to understand I can use the editor to improve the image, I wouldn't mind fixing things there.
(In reply to Steve Dodier-Lazaro from comment #5) > If we can get information on the screen resolution, we would be able to > ensure > we don't e.g. take more than 80% of the monitor's size but we can still > provide > a better overview of wallpapers on large monitors. If you think this would be > a nice improvement, I can open a standalone report for this. At least here the settings manager remembers the size of the window, so I don't see that problem. I wouldn't want to introduce too much magic in terms of window size. Having a good minimum that works on a lot of displays and then let the users handle this *once* and from then on they'll get the size they want. You could argue the same is true for many other apps. E.g. when opening a video in Parole, why not change the window size to 80% of your screen size automatically? I'd rather have Parole or apps in general remember their size, then I can control whether it should be 80% or 10%. > The wallpaper sources button could take to a tiny dialog that just contains > a list > of scanned folders. I really don't think it's ok to tell users to manually > find > images and then create symbolic links. Some distros like to rename packages > and > move their content around, so we could end up with broken symlinks, but the > main > issue is that users will have to *find* where all images are > (/usr/share/backgrounds, > /usr/share/backdrops, /usr/share/backgrounds/xfce, their own photos) and > create links > one by one to get a view of all the potential wallpapers at the same time. > Please > do time yourselves doing it, I'm pretty sure it's not so trivial. My idea of > a user > wanting to decide what wallpaper they want to use is not that of a user > wanting to do > a lot of efforts, but click here and there and see the results immediately. You're making it sound like copying the wallpapers you want into a folder is terribly difficult. (Yeah, you don't have to necessarily do symlinks, we have enough diskspace for this nowadays ;)) I for one have >3 different folders with different wallpaper collections in it. Depending on which one I want, I select it and boom. Done. > If I want to cycle through wallpapers, I now need to create a folder with > symlinks > to all of them, but I could as well just click on 2 or 3 wallpapers I like > and have > the desktop cycle through those. There used to be a list where the cycling > wallpapers > could be written, now I'm not sure how to get the same behaviour. My > "cycling" > wallpapers would contain Xubuntu/Ubuntu/Xfce wallpapers, GNOME wallpapers, > my own > wallpapers stored in a folder on my ~ and photos of my relatives. It takes a > lot of > moving things around to do this right now, *outside* the UI which is not so > intuitive > (I'm tempted to think it's just not possible, symlinks had actually not come > to my > mind until you two suggested it), because I can no longer open files from > different > locations in the UI as I used to. In 4.10 you couldn't even automatically cycle through wallpapers if I remember correctly, definitely not time-based. I still think that xfdesktop is not an image editor and not a manager of your photo collection. It should be a very simple app that displays an image of your liking below all other windows and (maybe) the contents of a folder. > My dream feature: > Right click image, tweak brightness/saturation, get a dialog/popover, tweak > the image, > see the difference. Other images not affected. Took me 10 seconds. > > Current workflow: > Boot up GIMP, find where the image is and open it, change the image, *save > it into > a writable folder, switch the Wallpaper UI to that folder, select the image, > switch > the UI back to the original folder to compare with the original and with > other > candidate wallpapers, switch again to the writable folder or go back to GIMP > to > re-change the settings**. Took me several minutes even if I know what I'm > doing. > > At the very least we could add a right click menu to images to open the > folder where > they are/load them up in the image editor to help with the first steps? Note > that also > getting support for multiple source directories would dramatically ease the > current > workflow. I understand, but that seems like a thing you do *once* per wallpaper, not constantly. I'm pretty sure this'll be just a source of further headache ("I want non-/destructive editing of images." "Why can't I crop the image?" etc.) and maintenance. Imo you should just get your collection in order once and for all ;) > The problem is, if I do this I have to copy/paste all of /usr/share/back* > images > into a writable folder before I can start hoping to have a unified view of my > wallpapers with the current UI. If it was as easy to add wallpapers to the > list as > it was in 4.10, and if I was nudged/helped to understand I can use the > editor to > improve the image, I wouldn't mind fixing things there. That feature was not really working as the list wasn't persistent across reboots or at least very buggy. (At least if I remember correctly.) Also what to do if users want >1 list? I really think folders are simpler.
brainwash on irc pointed out http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8qiIjSaOFo4/VHiNknn-RdI/AAAAAAAAU9o/JODc3zfcQ3s/s1600/linuxmint171backgrounds-n-applet.png But I'll let the Design SIG hash out the ideas and mockups before I make changes to it (because I know I'll get it wrong).
I guess I'd have to use it to really understand how that left "folder-pane" or sidebar works. To be honest, this enhancement is quite low on my current todo list priority-wise, so if someone else wants to hash out the details, I can comment, but I probably won't come up with a proposal myself anytime soon.
Hello everyone, these are a bunch of unrelated changes and would better fit in separate bug reports. Please report each individual feature request in a separate bugzilla report. For example 2) has already been reported at https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10329 1) looks like it's fixed, but the huge wall of text about unrelated requests makes it hard to tell if it actually is. Please report it a a spearate bug if needed. Please report other points separately if they matter to you. I'll leave this bug open for 1 month to give it enough visibility and will close it as invalid on 11 Jan 2015. Please, 1 request per bugzilla ticket. This will help maintainers. Thanks
No activity for a long time, so closing. Please report remaining issues in separate tickets.