Stage 3: Draft the UI
- First draft, mostly illustrating how simple the dialog would look (or did I forget something?)
- I'd say make the bottom look like this:
- [label folder:][location chooser] [label style:][combobox] [label colors:][combobox][1st colorbutton] [2nd colorbutton].
- Don't use a frame, but rather pack everything in a vbox and center align the label. We also need an info that the dialog applies on the current workspace/monitor/screen.
- Yeah, the intention of the “Wallpaper of Workspace 1” is to show where the wallpaper will be changed, maybe that's not obvious enough though.
- Where to put the cyclic timer? Chooser for random.
- Yeah, in fact that was something we didn't reach a decision on in Stage 1. I suggested an Advanced tab, but not sure whether that's not too much anyway for just two options. Theoretically we could also put the colors there.
- Colors are important. So we should put them there. Bit like this.
- Looks fine to me, actually that matches your proposal for the bottom pretty closely. And actually we have enough space below the wallpaper-iconview.
- Yes, if we left align the folder selection, right align the style and color. Below that the options (like Mac Os) to set the auto-change pictures.
- Cool, sounds like we pretty much have it figured out. Shall I do a final mockup or is the description that we have now enough for you? (+1)
Stage 2: Starting to draw conclusions
- Iconview or Grid instead of Listview, tooltip with filename and size
- Preview size of 128x128px max (scaled), so we can use the thumbnail backend.
- Drop Image-lists and show contents of one folder instead (starting with random pic)
- Drop brightness and saturation setting
- Image styles in one combobox (with separators): None | Tiled, Centered, Stretched, Scaled, Zoomed | Spanning screens
- Drop the “auto”-style
- Wallpapers per workspace / wallpapers per monitor
- Dialog always shows setting for current workspace/monitor
- Fade-animation when changing wallpapers
Stage 1: Collecting ideas
- Change the listview for an iconview/grid wallpapers (filenames really don't matter for selecting a wallpaper)
- A tooltip with name and original size is sufficient (+1)
- “Open folder” as alternative to “open/add file” (many people keep their backgrounds in one folder)
- We can drop the image lists and instead go for a random picture per-folder (so the list shows the contents of a single folder).
- Why random? (I agree with the rest, showing a single folder, showing the selected picture as wallpaper)
- Start with a random picture and then follow the list, or we have to save the last shown image.
- I get it now, sorry for the confusion.
- Drop the brightness and saturation meter (xfdesktop != image-editor)
- “Hide” additional options for images in an “advanced” popup or tab (at least: auto-change every $n minutes, file-list)
- Alternatives for tabs for additional displays? GtkCombobox (pro: consistent with display-dialog, con: not obvious whether there are new/additional displays)
- Mac OS X uses individual dialogs for each monitor.
- That's not a bad idea, but I think I'd need to see how they implemented it. I mean: at what stage do the dialogs separate? Are there simply 2 popping up next to each other when you click “desktop prefs” in the settings manager?
- This movie shows it for workspaces. For background with 2 screens, a dialog is opened at each screen (or you can drag it into the other screen).
- We can bundle background styles in a single combobox:
- Drop the Auto option.
- Why?
- Auto chooses tiled if the image size is half the monitor size. Else it acts as zoomed. Who would guess that?
- Very true. I guess it just felt comforting to have that option, so that one wouldn't have to think of what the different image-styles mean :) But I guess we can drop it.
- Add “None” to hide the image.
- Would that expose/enable additional buttons to add/edit the background color/s?
- To avoid a regression we should always show the possibility of a gradient (horiz/vert), so the old transparent svgs works with a gradient.
- It's a bit confusing imo, but ok.
- Add the single screen image options: Tiled, Centered, Stretched, Scaled, Zoomed.
- Add option “Stretched”, to span across screens, disabling options for 2nd tab. (+1)
- Possibly put a separator in the menu for these 3 groups.
- Yeah, I think that'd make sense. Nice idea to get those in one place!
- What about per-workspace wallpapers?
- A much asked-for feature. I think it'd be nice, although I'm not sure yet how to bake it into the UI without making it messy again. (Similar issue as with the multiple monitors in fact, so maybe there's a common solution to both.)
- A nice feature for wallpaper transformations would be a fade-over.
- I assume you mean overlaying two images? Or do you mean a fade-effect when changing wallpapers?
- Yep, fade effect when changing wallpapers (esp nice for the slideshow). It also provides some relative time to load the image.