[Shotwell] shotwell mockups(daniel planas)

[Adam Dingle]

> my name is Daniel Planas, it's you may know me by some of my work in
> ubuntu as a designer, I made some mockups of a possible reorganization
> of the program. thus be located above the toolbar as most applications
> and is more consistent for the user. I hope you like.
>
> http://i50.tinypic.com/vwsbch.jpg
>
> http://i49.tinypic.com/1xz7ls.jpg http://i49.tinypic.com/1xz7ls.jpg
>
> http://i49.tinypic.com/ae409d.jpg http://i49.tinypic.com/ae409d.jpg
>
> http://i49.tinypic.com/30cu4ye.jpg http://i49.tinypic.com/30cu4ye.jpg
>
> Daniel.P
>    

Daniel,

Thanks for putting these mockups together, and apologies for the delay 
in getting back to you - we've been very busy trying to finish up 
Shotwell 0.6.  We're always interested in discussing Shotwell's look and 
feel.  It looks like you're suggesting some of the following changes:

- toolbar at the top

We intentionally put Shotwell's toolbar at the bottom of the window 
(unlike most GNOME applications) because we wanted to minimize visual 
distractions when looking at a photo.  We think the eye is most 
sensitive to the top of an image - that's where faces are likely to be, 
for example - and so we wanted to minimize visual noise in that area.  
Totem has also chosen to put its toolbar at the bottom, presumably for 
similar reasons.  We also think that having the toolbar at the bottom 
fits nicely with the Basic Information pane on the lower left.

If lots of people would prefer having the toolbar at the top, however, 
we could reconsider or possibly make this an option.  I'd be happy to 
hear opinions from other people on this list.

- icons at the ends of the zoom slider

Agreed; this would be a nice touch.  We have a ticket for this at 
http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/1614 .

- search box

Agreed; it would be great to have a search box where I could type the 
name of any tag or any photo filename or caption, for instance.  We have 
a ticket for this at http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/80 .

- new icons

I like the look of the icons you've suggested.  Currently some of 
Shotwell's icons are fixed but should instead change to adapt to the 
user's theme as described at http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/1578 .  Your 
icons look like a particularly good match for Ubuntu's Ambiance theme.  
It's too late to make icon changes for 0.6, but we're planning to 
release 0.7 later this summer in time for Ubuntu 10.10, and we should 
work together to make sure that the icons in that release are a good 
match for the theme in that Ubuntu release (and other distributions as 
well, of course).

- lowercase button text

This is a bit unusual for a GNOME application, though I myself don't 
mind this look.  Possibly worth considering.

I think that covers most of your proposed changes.  In a few of your 
mockups there's a red circle with the number 1 by the mouse cursor when 
it's over the Edit button.  I don't quite understand what that's about; 
feel free to explain that if you'd like to discuss it more.

Great pictures, by the way. :)

adam