GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 62511
Save image usability
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
The "Save image" and "Save image as..." popup menu options have some slight flaws that make them confusing. The label for "Save Image" should definitely contain the name of the default image save directory, e.g. "Save image to /tmp/plants/grasses/". This additional prompt will save the user an extra step if he or she has forgotten what the default image save directory is today. Maybe add an extra popup menu choice labeled "Save image to..." which prompts for a directory to save the image to while retaining the same file name. Sometimes users just want to save a file somewhere different without affecting its name. Recent changes to the GTK+ file widgets in Debian/woody have broken wildcard expansion when tab is pressed, which is how I used to get around this before. "Save image to..." would set the default directory for "Save image", just like "Save image as..." does. "Save image to..." *could* be implemented within "Save image as..." if the save dialog didn't erase the file name when a different directory is selected or a new directory is created. It's deeply irritating when that happens, and I'll report is as a separate bug.
first of all, its useless to file a bug against the fileselector and the fact that it loses the filename when changing a directory. this issue has been brought number of times but we've decided not to workaround gtk+1.x shortcommings but rather stay compatibly "broken" this will be fixed in gtk 2.0 or after that, the relevant bug you might want to comment on is http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6791 as of you other suggestion, the additional menu item will be highly redundant imo adding the directory to the save image item might be a good idea, but i dont have strong oppinion on this
I agree that Save image is very confusing. My concern about adding a "to dir ..." is that the menu could get too big. Any idea on how to solve it ? Maybe showing "save to dir ..." in the statusbar ?
Okay, an extra item would probably be overkill, and there's wisdom in using the standard save dialog. It's a shame that the standard dialog is such a sod to use. Marco: just a thought, but when the user's concentrating on a pop-up menu, he or she's not going to be looking down at the status bar. At least I don't :/ The nearest thing to that is the tooltip containing the URL that you get when looking at a bookmark item. Possibly it would be better to truncate to the last few directory path elements which fit within, say, 25 characters? So that /usr/local/files/crazy/strange/odd/funny/herrings/small/silver/ sould become .../herrings/small/silver/ Assume that the most meaningful bit of a path is on the end, in other words :) Also, using "~" or "~another" as an abbreviation could be a win. Should I bash out some C or perl code as a demo of what I mean? Combine the truncations with the full path in the tooltip perhaps. I think there was a long thread on the Fun With Perl mailing list (fwp) about this very thing. We probably don't want to go to quote those lengths though :)
save image menu is dead in cvs :)