GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 491826
Defaults are wrong
Last modified: 2007-11-25 09:50:29 UTC
The new defaults are "wheel scrolls vertically" and "button 1 does nothing". The defaults should be "wheel zooms" and "button 1 drags the image around". This is the only sane default for an image *VIEWER*. The HIG only thinks about document-editing applications, which EOG is not. I'm very disappointed to see that people are using the HIG as "immutable rules", instead of paying attention to the fact that they are "guidelines". EOG is read-only. It is a viewer, not an editor. Therefore, it makes sense to have as comfortable a viewer as possible. Think of how you view a photograph in paper. You look at the complete photo (zoom-to-fit). Then you pick an interesting spot. You move your head closer to that spot, or use a loupe (zoom in). Then you start to explore interesting areas around that spot by moving your eyes and your hands (scroll around by dragging). Images are two-dimensional, while my mouse wheel is one-dimensional. People do not normally view tall and skinny images (i.e. images are not web pages); they view photographs of well-known aspect ratios (4:3 or 3:2), so scrolling vertically by default is pretty much useless. Making button 1 do nothing by default means that you just wasted the single most accessible part of the user interface. People are *not* going to read the manual and discover the multitude of modifier keys that they must now use to examine an image. I am making this bug a blocker because the current defaults totally destroy the user interface of EOG.
Hi Federico, (In reply to comment #0) > The new defaults are "wheel scrolls vertically" and "button 1 does nothing". > > The defaults should be "wheel zooms" and "button 1 drags the image around". > > This is the only sane default for an image *VIEWER*. > > The HIG only thinks about document-editing applications, which EOG is not. I'm > very disappointed to see that people are using the HIG as "immutable rules", > instead of paying attention to the fact that they are "guidelines". I haven't used HIG as "immutable rules". I felt it would make sense to have it working consistently with the rest of desktop. But yes, the HIG motivated me. :-) > EOG is read-only. It is a viewer, not an editor. Therefore, it makes sense to > have as comfortable a viewer as possible. > > Think of how you view a photograph in paper. You look at the complete photo > (zoom-to-fit). Then you pick an interesting spot. You move your head closer > to that spot, or use a loupe (zoom in). Then you start to explore interesting > areas around that spot by moving your eyes and your hands (scroll around by > dragging). > > Images are two-dimensional, while my mouse wheel is one-dimensional. People do > not normally view tall and skinny images (i.e. images are not web pages); they > view photographs of well-known aspect ratios (4:3 or 3:2), so scrolling > vertically by default is pretty much useless. Good point. > Making button 1 do nothing by default means that you just wasted the single > most accessible part of the user interface. People are *not* going to read the > manual and discover the multitude of modifier keys that they must now use to > examine an image. Ok. > I am making this bug a blocker because the current defaults totally destroy the > user interface of EOG. I think I've got enough negative feedback from users/developers (see bug #479884) to convince me to restore the previous defaults. I'll release a 2.20.2 release with this fix now in order to get it updated in distros as soon as possible. Commited in trunk and gnome-2-20 branch. 2007-10-30 Lucas Rocha <lucasr@gnome.org> * data/eog.schemas.in: restored the default mousewheel-for-zooming behavior by setting /apps/eog/view/scroll_wheel_zoom key to true by default. Fixes bug #491826.
Thanks Lucas, I missed the previous defaults myself.
Thanks, indeed.
(In reply to comment #0) > ... > Images are two-dimensional, while my mouse wheel is one-dimensional. People do > ... There do exist mice with two wheel (Like that from a4tech). Unfortunatelly they do work very badly since Xorg ~ 7.0 (I don't remeber exactly).