On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 11:14:52PM +0200, Jon Nordby wrote: > On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 5:49 PM, Martin Renold <[email protected]> wrote: > > - Users are forced to learn about eraser mode and color picking hotkeys > > before they are able to use the palette. I don't like this at all. There > > should be some intuitive way for users with only basic painting needs to > > use the palette, without forcing them to learn/use unrelated features. > > Personally I really like the interface concept, but I fully understand your > concerns. > This is a big issue, and begs the question: What would be an intuitive way > for such users to interact? > In essence there are three operations: paint/set color, pick/select color > and erase/unset color that needs to be quick and easy. Any ideas?
What about adding three (radio?)buttons to the palette to switch into these modes? It should be visible which of the three buttons is currently active. Instead of clicking on the "delete colors" button, the user could also hit the key for eraser mode (button state and cursor shape reflecting this). Although one problem is that the brush has no "color picking mode". And of course, when the user only clicks on the buttons, the previous brush state would have to be restored when returning to the canvas, to avoid confusing users who don't know yet how to leave eraser mode. And maybe a fourth button to show some color chooser. > On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 5:49 PM, Martin Renold <[email protected]> wrote: > There are actually two different "use modes" for the palette: picking a > > color from it (quickly, in the middle of painting) and editing the palette > > (not so often, maybe just saving the current color into the palette, but > > more likely doing several changes to it). Maybe it is worth to have two > > different appearances of the palette for those cases? There is no need to > > show any buttons or the difference between auto-selected and generated > > colors when the user is just picking. (Just an idea; the question remains > > how those two modes would interact.) > > There are indeed two use cases for this tool, and that is currently not > adressed in a good way, as the above issues show. Therefore I propose the > following change: > 1) Make the behaviour on invokation be like the "v" color changer This will fix picking for fullscreen+keyboard users. > 2) Have a button on that popup called "Edit" (or similar) that opens the > dialog we have now This seems to be a good and well-discoverable way to do it, while requiring only one key/menu entry for the palette. You could even hide the "Edit" button until the user has released the key. Then all you see during normal picking workflow would be only the uncluttered palette; but that's a detail that can also be tried later. > This will (hopefully): > 1) greatly reduce the time needed to pick a color form the palette (the most > common task) Yes but only for keyboard users? Can this be extended to also work for users who want buttonless point-and-click? Maybe they could just leave open the palette in its "edit mode" (which could be a permanent window) and leave the "pick color" tool selected there? (Hm... I guess this assumes that it does not share the eraser mode state with the canvas any more, which is somewhat against your original idea?) bye, Martin _______________________________________________ Mypaint-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/mypaint-discuss
