GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 657560
Overview visual improvements
Last modified: 2012-05-01 02:01:44 UTC
The layout over the System Settings overview has been bothering me a bit. There are several spacing issues. The text wrapping (one, two or three lines) doesn't make for a pleasant reading experience. Overall,the overview is a bit hard to scan. Attached a mockup that addresses these issues. Text starts at the same column, more spacing between the groups. All the "buttons" have the same size. This makes it easier to scane and look nicer in other languages too where text may be much longer. Maybe we can have a subtle hover effect on the buttons too so they look more clickable.
Created attachment 194966 [details] comparison between old and new setting overviews
Created attachment 194967 [details] mistake, this is the comparison
Created attachment 194978 [details] Adjusted all settings layout I really like it, Hylke. It's definitely easier to parse. My only concern is whether the items make easy enough click targets. Also, this might not work so well on a touch screen device. An alternative option could be to adjust the existing layout - see the attachment. Bug 647650 is related, btw.
There's room to make them a bit bigger. Also, the actionable area is actually nigger than it looks. The biggest thing that hinders readability are the centered labels in my opinion. I have a really hard time finding the thing I want. The alignment on the left helps with that. See also http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/typelayout/a/centeredtext.htm "Centered text is harder to read because the starting position of each line changes, forcing the reader to work harder to find where each line begins to continue reading. For large blocks of text, try to avoid centered text. Numbered and bulleted lists should almost always be left-aligned as well to aid in quickly scanning the list."
(In reply to comment #4) > There's room to make them a bit bigger. Also, the actionable area is actually > nigger than it looks. You can consider me convinced then. :)
and i meant "bigger" there ofcourse ;)
The problems is that the main way to recognise the various panels is using the icons (which are far too dull right now, especially compared to the new application icons), not the text. Why would we use those superb application icons in gnome-shell, only to have small and dull icons in the control-center. Sure it wastes less space, but I don't think it's a good solution. At all.
The icons can be made one step bigger if needed. The best way of recognising an item isn't the icon, but both the text and icon. And the text layout isn't as good as it could be right now. As for the shell overview: it has a lot of space to fill. Making the icons bigger means fewer icons on the screen and thus a less overwhelming look. This is not the case in the smaller System Settings window. We can look at the touch area and icon sizes, but that's a different issues really. This is just about moving away from the centred labels.
Uhm, Bastien is probably looking at something else, since I see no dull icons there, just SMALL icons :-) Anyway I like Hylke's approach, my only concern is the tiny target area which will be a pain on a touch device.
(In reply to comment #9) > Uhm, Bastien is probably looking at something else, since I see no dull icons > there, just SMALL icons :-) I see gray and blue. Apart from the color icon which uses pastel colours, and screen and power some yellow. > Anyway I like Hylke's approach, my only concern is the tiny target area which > will be a pain on a touch device. I also don't like the current search rendering, which will need to be taken into account when redesigned the "rest" UI.
(In reply to comment #10) > (In reply to comment #9) ... > I also don't like the current search rendering, which will need to be taken > into account when redesigned the "rest" UI. There's a design for search results in bug 654977.
I would also like to add that even if the text is a hit target, people using touch will _not_ be clicking on the text, they'll always try to hit the icon, and which such a small icon...
(In reply to comment #12) > I would also like to add that even if the text is a hit target, people using > touch will _not_ be clicking on the text, they'll always try to hit the icon, > and which such a small icon... Then we should also replace all the shell menus...
(In reply to comment #13) > (In reply to comment #12) > > I would also like to add that even if the text is a hit target, people using > > touch will _not_ be clicking on the text, they'll always try to hit the icon, > > and which such a small icon... > > Then we should also replace all the shell menus... Nice try playing stupid. Try a phone or tablet with a grid of icons, and let me know when you hit the text in the launchers rather than the icon.
Bastien I see your points about having too much blue and gray gray in icons (so not about being dull :-)), refreshed wallpaper w/o blue, filled bugs about other icons we can use.
Created attachment 196343 [details] Layout mockup I still rather like Hylke's suggestion. If we don't go for that though, we should really try and improve the existing layout. Having a tighter presentation of the panel items would really help (see attachment).
Here's an elaborated version of the mockup posted in the previous comment: https://github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/raw/master/system-settings/overview-aday.png https://github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/raw/master/system-settings/overview-aday-guides.png This seeks to address the other bugs filed against the system settings overview (654977, 660707, 658839).
*** Bug 670268 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
As I wrote in bug #670268, to avoid having a useless scrollbar when the labels take too much vertical space (because the locale uses longer texts, or because the font size has been set to a bigger one), maybe you could use 'pango_layout_get_height' to calculate the height of each row, and then adjust the size of the window accordingly. PS: If my comments are stupid or just not welcome, just tell it to me politely and I'll shut up...
(In reply to comment #19) > PS: If my comments are stupid or just not welcome, just tell it to me politely > and I'll shut up... Not stupid, but patronising. If implementing what you explain was this easy, it would already have been implemented. After spending 3 days at the end of the 3.2 development cycle trying to unbreak the overview window sizing, I went for something that worked for the majority. And it looks like crap in English with the default fonts and themes too, so it's not like we're discriminating.
> Not stupid, but patronising. If implementing what you explain was this easy, it > would already have been implemented. After spending 3 days at the end of the > 3.2 development cycle trying to unbreak the overview window sizing, I went for > something that worked for the majority. And it looks like crap in English with > the default fonts and themes too, so it's not like we're discriminating. My intention was never to say that it's easy to do and that you must do it. I just proposed something that is definitely doable, event if it's difficult. Now, I perfectly understand that it's only nitpicking and that forces are better spent on other more important things, but that doesn't mean the idea should not be mentionned on a bug report.
*** Bug 670438 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 671866 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 673869 ***