[Shotwell] Shotwell, early draft

[Adam Dingle]

Tor.

On 07/19/2010 01:29 AM, Tor Løvskogen Bollingmo wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Thank you for the good feedback. I've now improved the mockup, addressing some
> of the points in your feedback:
>    

thanks for your latest mockup.  I've cc-ed the Shotwell mailing list on 
this message since that's a good place for design discussions to take 
place.  As you know the mailing list doesn't allow attachments, so I've 
uploaded your mockup to here:

http://i30.tinypic.com/2n1crwn.jpg

> • Images are now square, with a white border, to seperate image (e.g blue sky
> images) with the blue selection color.
>    

I personally find the white border to be a bit harsh since it contrasts 
starkly with the surrounding gray.  As you've probably seen, Shotwell 
0.6 includes a gray border around each image, and I personally find even 
that to be a bit too pronounced so we may make it fainter at some point 
(this is http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/2156).

> • Image icons in the rectangles at the zoom slider.
>    

Those look good to me, I think.

> *The Publishing Step*
>    

For the benefit of those on this mailing list, I'll first repeat my 
previous comments which you're responding to:

 > Adam Dingle wrote:
 > You've suggested putting the introductory publishing step in the main 
window
 > rather than in a dialog. It's not clear whether you're suggesting 
that *all*
 > steps of the publishing process would live in the main window, or 
just the
 > initial step. In some of those steps we display various Web pages from
 > publishing providers which have a white background. It's not clear to 
me that
 > those would look good in the main window which normally has a dark gray
 > background in Shotwell. If we did put these steps into the main 
window we'd
 > also presumably need to add a sidebar item which the user could use 
to select
 > the publishing view (since they could navigate to another page and 
then want
 > to come back to it). In any case, we could consider this, but it 
would be a
 > significant code change and I think it's not likely to be a high 
priority.

> If it's required for a user to browse a web page, it should be done in a
> seperate window.

I believe you're suggesting that most publishing steps should take place 
in the main Shotwell window, but that the steps which involve Web pages 
should occur in a separate window - do you mean a dialog in Shotwell, or 
are you suggesting that we launch the user's Web browser to perform 
these steps?

> Can the publishing step be made with API Calls (?) instead of a
> user browsing.

I believe you're asking whether we can avoid displaying these Web pages 
altogether.  The answer is no: some publishing services require that 
users log in through their Web site.  We've chosen to encapsulate the 
Web pages in a Shotwell dialog because we think this makes the 
publishing experience as seamlessly integrated as possible.

> I see that iPhoto also uses a web view, so maybe it's not
> possible to do this without a web view.

iPhoto, like Shotwell, takes the user through a series of publishing 
steps in a dialog window; I assume that's what you mean by a "web 
view".  It might also be possible to make the Web pages appear in the 
main Shotwell window, but as I suggested in my original comments I'm not 
sure that would look great.

> too bad as it breaks the user flow inside the app.
>    

In my opinion Shotwell's current approach, in which the providers' web 
pages appear in a Shotwell dialog, has an easier user flow than if 
Shotwell were to launch a separate window or browser to display those 
pages.  If you think that your approach would be easier for the user, 
I'd be curious to see a series of mockups which show what each step of 
the publishing process looks like in your vision.

> *The Sidebar Navigatio*n
> Before designing navigational elements, is a tree view beneficial for users? I
> can see power users wanting this to be able to fast skip to a sub album. But how
> often would people need sub albums? I think it mostly would cause complexity
> among users not accustomed to tree views. So is this really essential for
> managing photos?
>    

Shotwell has had a tree view of events since its very earliest releases: 
this lets the user easily find photos from any given year and month.  I 
expect that the tag list will also become a tree soon since many users 
have requested this (http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/1401).  We're also 
thinking about adding a geographic tree to the sidebar which lets the 
user browse photos by the location they were taken 
(http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/1473) as well as a folder browser tree 
(http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/1594).

I can imagine some greatly simplified photo manager which has no trees 
at all, but that would not be Shotwell.

> I'm raising this question of user experience because I want the app to feel as
> easy as possible for first time and novice users :)
>    

I agree that that is important!

adam