GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 615449
vertical image collection
Last modified: 2021-06-19 08:46:25 UTC
I noticed the image collection in 2.30 became a list again (rather than an icon view). This raises some interesting questions: shouldn't the image collection be a vertical list (ie: a side pane in itself), rather than a horizontal one? Some thoughts: - Recent computer monitors are all in widescreen aspect ratio. They have much less height than they have width. - Combined with the toolbar at the top, on many lower resolution widescreen monitors, somewhere between 1/4 and 2/3 of the screen can be eaten up, with little left for the actual image being displayed. - It is slightly unnatural for users to scroll horizontally, while vertical lists are very common
(In reply to comment #0) > I noticed the image collection in 2.30 became a list again (rather than an icon > view). ?? > This raises some interesting questions: shouldn't the image collection > be a vertical list (ie: a side pane in itself), rather than a horizontal one? > > Some thoughts: > - Recent computer monitors are all in widescreen aspect ratio. They have much > less height than they have width. > - Combined with the toolbar at the top, on many lower resolution widescreen > monitors, somewhere between 1/4 and 2/3 of the screen can be eaten up, with > little left for the actual image being displayed. > - It is slightly unnatural for users to scroll horizontally, while vertical > lists are very common Well, actually it is already possible to place the collection on any side of eog's window and even make it resizable ever since the 2.20 release. It just wasn't done officially as it was not entirely glitch free (esp. in fullscreen mode). We should likely look at it again as this request came up every now and then in the last 4 years. To change the position change the image_collection_position and image_collection_resizable gconf keys at /apps/eog/ui.
> I noticed the image collection in 2.30 became a list again (rather than an icon > view). Just to clarify that point: I meant "behaves more like a listview widget than an iconview widget" (though it's not the case in the strict technical/implementation sense, I presume). In 2.28 for example, you had several "rows" of icons, and the scrollbar was on the right and you could move in two directions/axis: rows and columns. In 2.30, you only move in columns (left/right arrows).
That sounds like a downstream modification. There is a gconf key to toggle expansion of the thumbnails view, it's off by default, and the behavior is as you mention it, and it's been like that for over four years.
Well probably that any of those two settings do not corner 100% of scenarios, and users (compared to "distributors") are unlikely to find this feature hidden in gconf. Perhaps it could be part of the View menu or the Preferences dialog (I know that you don't want to have too many options in there though).
Taking into account the huge number of wide screens and also that even cheese has such an option I wouldn't be against making this a supported feature, granted that we first fix the issues Felix comments.
Created attachment 160759 [details] Comparison of vertical and horizontal image collections.
The attachment I've posted is a comparison of vertical and horizontal image layouts. I've been doing some design work on EoG recently and this was one of the things I experimented with in my mockups. Though a vertical image collection would make sense in terms of common monitor dimensions, I rejected it on the grounds that a vertical collection distracts from the image being viewed. A horizontal collection frames the image being displayed much more nicely, and also combines better when side panels are being used.
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