On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 6:08 AM, Otto Kekäläineno...@sange.fi wrote:
Lainaus Alex Launi alex.la...@gmail.com:
On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 9:01 AM, Otto Kekäläinen o...@sange.fi wrote:
Well, for advanced uses like you and me F-Spot is fine, but for normal home
users it is too complicated.
Could you provide some evidence for this? F-spot's UI needs some serious
We'll, I've migrated hundreds of Windows users into Ubuntu (I work for
a Linux support company) and nine out of then users run into trouble
when using Nautilus they try to open and/or manipulate images.
On a fresh Ubuntu install I always install Gthumb and make it the
default image viewer in Nautilus file associations. That fixes all the
usability problems I've witnessed.
I also work as a usability export in software development projects,
and it's my professional opinion that Gthumb would be better than EOG.
If you want to do usability testing yourself, try out this scenario:
1. prepare a folder with a lot of photos
2. ask the user to open that folder and do some tasks. for example:
remove duplicate photos, rotate some image, crop/resize another etc.
3. copy that folder to a CD or USB and give it to you
Step 2 is where users run into problems. At first when they
doubleclick the image, the only function they can do is to rotate.
After this users do various things, but most commonly they click the
image with the secondary mouse button and select open with. First
they try F-spot which also only allows rotating (in single image
viewing mode). Secondly they open Gimp and then they scream, that
Linux is too complicated.
I think you touch on the real issue here. It's not so much a problem
with viewing photos, as we all have noted there are already two
options, EOG when you are in a folder and F-Spot for collections. The
real problem is that those programs aren't image editors and the GIMP
is a tool for advanced users. GThumb doesn't solve this problem
either.
I don't think there is a real solution for Karmic, but I am excited to
see where a new project called Nathive goes. It's an image editor for
GNOME focused on usability, logic and providing a smooth learning
curve for everyone. It's definitely a niche that the GNOME desktop
needs filled
http://www.nathive.org/
If Gthumb is installed, steps 2 and 3 generate only minor problems and
most users succeed with the task (based on what I've seen in real life
situations).
Or try this: as a user to import a file from their camera/phone to the
computer, then resize it to fit under on megabyte and then mail it to
you. With Gthumb's ability to manipulate images in place this is easy
but with EOG or F-Spot users will not make it at all. Asking somebody
to use Gimp for this simple task is overkill.
love, but the developers are working hard. Rather than have TWO photo
managers, one of which isn't such a great photo manager, it makes more sense
Yep, we really don't need to photo _managers_. Howerver we need one
proper photo viewer and at the moment, Gthumb is the only one with all
the most commonly needed features.
to file bugs on f-spot, and *make it *less complicated. Maybe you could
point out some specific areas where you feel it's lacking for users. I
wouldn't call myself an advanced photo user at all, I just use it for minor
tagging, slide shows, and exporting to facebook/flickr.
If I'd file a bug, that the file hierarchy should be changed so, that
imported folder remain and single folders, do you think they would do
the change? Touching the filesystem is a major change in architecture
and that is not something they'll do (I presume).
However it could be worth to file a bug that the single image viewer
mode should have more features, like cropping and resizing.
Also it has one huge drawback: it saves all the pictures in a folder
structure based on months and dates. This makes it really hard to browse a
F-Spot archive from the filesystem or from any other image viewer.
I agree. This is really annoying.
Jep, this is the biggest drawback and I don't think they'll change
this, because the whole idea with F-Spot is to forget the old file
hierarchy and move on to tagging based work model.
I know tagging is the superior way to file and sort your images, but the
case for normal home (and business) users is that they still like to think
about their image collections as folders.
I'm pretty sure this isn't true. Folders confuse the hell out of everyone.
They only think about them this way because it's all they've ever had. This
is bigger than f-spot however and needs dealt with at the file system/file
browser level.
Sure folders confuse, but since users anyway browse their files in
Nautilus in the first place, jumping to F-Spot to manipulate an image
in a folder really messes up the users head.
F-Spot sucks at browsing images in folders and to get all the benefits of
F-Spot you need to import the images first into the
