Hello, I'm writing this bug report after a discussion with Stephan regarding Ristretto, in order to track some possible usability issues / improvements, and to help identify and fix the weak points of Ristretto compared to others. The spec i'm writing for Xubuntu default image viewer is here and allows comparing Ristretto to other similar apps : https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu/Specifications/Karmic/DefaultImageViewer I'll begin with the fullscreen mode : * the toolbar should imho only pop-up when launching fullscreen mode and moving the mouse to the bottom, instead of when any kind of mouse activity happens. In public buildings, a mouse can have little moves due to the repercussion of acoustif waves, which would cause the toolbar to appear in a slideshow. * it would be good to color the thumbnail bar with the same background colour than the image's area, ie. black (or at least dark grey) to avoid taking the user's focus from the picture. About the thumbnails bar : * in the git version, the thumbnails's width/height ratio isnt preserved when the thumbnail bar's size is increased. I think you should keep the same ratio and then fill the gabs with the tb bar's background colour. * possibly sort the pictures by origin folder and add a little separator between different folders to help users deal with many thumbnails ? * currently, an image can be several times in the thumbnail's bar. Is this really wanted ? * there is no option to sort the bar or delete pictures from it. Maybe they should be in the toolbar and on right click in the bar. * Should it appear when only one image is opened ? Open Folder : * If i want to open my home folder, i have to go to parent folder (ie. /home) and then click on my home folder. I suspect this is a bug in the open-folder dialog itself, but the expect behaviour would be that if i directly press "Open" in the dialog, it opens my current directory. Toolbars : there should imo be only one toolbar, in the top. Gpicview and EOG do this, afaik. I can do a mockup if needed. Misc * It seems that Ristretto's git version ignores some settings. It doesnt want to hide the thumbnails bar. * it couldnt either find out a list of available editors. This could be because i just compiled it and didnt install it properly ? * RAM usage dramatically increased in the latest version. Now using ~58 MB for a single pic opened, used to be about 22. Ristretto is already heavy compared to gpicview / geeqie (which has tons of features but a very bad GUI). Is there room for improvement ? Especially, any way to make sure the app releases all the used RAM each time an image is closed (or even more aggressive, each time you move to another pic, release the memory cache used for the previous one, for low-end machines). I think it's all for now. I'll add comments if i spot more things. Of course, all of this is just thoughts from one user, I dont intend to set guidelines or to denigrate the work done so far. I just really want Ristretto to get better !
(In reply to comment #0) > Hello, > > I'm writing this bug report after a discussion with Stephan regarding > Ristretto, in order to track some possible usability issues / improvements, and > to help identify and fix the weak points of Ristretto compared to others. > > The spec i'm writing for Xubuntu default image viewer is here and allows > comparing Ristretto to other similar apps : > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu/Specifications/Karmic/DefaultImageViewer > > I'll begin with the fullscreen mode : > * the toolbar should imho only pop-up when launching fullscreen mode and > moving the mouse to the bottom, instead of when any kind of mouse activity > happens. In public buildings, a mouse can have little moves due to the > repercussion of acoustif waves, which would cause the toolbar to appear in a > slideshow. Implemented in master > * it would be good to color the thumbnail bar with the same background colour > than the image's area, ie. black (or at least dark grey) to avoid taking the > user's focus from the picture. Not sure if I am going to implement that > About the thumbnails bar : > * in the git version, the thumbnails's width/height ratio isnt preserved when > the thumbnail bar's size is increased. I think you should keep the same ratio > and then fill the gabs with the tb bar's background colour. Implemented in master > * possibly sort the pictures by origin folder and add a little separator > between different folders to help users deal with many thumbnails ? > * currently, an image can be several times in the thumbnail's bar. Is this > really wanted ? Nope, this is a bug. > * there is no option to sort the bar or delete pictures from it. Maybe they > should be in the toolbar and on right click in the bar. They are in the toolbar, and menu. > Open Folder : > * If i want to open my home folder, i have to go to parent folder (ie. /home) > and then click on my home folder. I suspect this is a bug in the open-folder > dialog itself, but the expect behaviour would be that if i directly press > "Open" in the dialog, it opens my current directory. This is(/was) a bug in Gtk+ > Toolbars : there should imo be only one toolbar, in the top. Gpicview and EOG > do this, afaik. I can do a mockup if needed. Nope, the current interface is an improvement over the old one. If you want 1 toolbar, you can disable the one you don't use that often. > Misc > * It seems that Ristretto's git version ignores some settings. It doesnt want > to hide the thumbnails bar. Fixed in master. > * it couldnt either find out a list of available editors. This could be > because i just compiled it and didnt install it properly ? Fixed in master. > * RAM usage dramatically increased in the latest version. Now using ~58 MB for > a single pic opened, used to be about 22. Ristretto is already heavy compared > to gpicview / geeqie (which has tons of features but a very bad GUI). Is there > room for improvement ? Especially, any way to make sure the app releases all > the used RAM each time an image is closed (or even more aggressive, each time > you move to another pic, release the memory cache used for the previous one, > for low-end machines). Not yet fixed in master, this is due in 'fase-2' (when the interface is completed) > > I think it's all for now. I'll add comments if i spot more things. Of course, > all of this is just thoughts from one user, I dont intend to set guidelines or > to denigrate the work done so far. I just really want Ristretto to get better ! I'll mark this bug as fixed since most of the issues are solved, obvious or won't fix. :-) Thanks.