GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 616438
Properties dialog should be a sidebar
Last modified: 2012-01-24 17:38:05 UTC
Having the properties dialog as a sidebar would offer a number of advantages over the current approach: * It would make the relationship between the main image view images and the properties much clearer. * It would also be a much more efficient use of EoG's existing functionality. The current properties dialog ends up reimplementing a large amount of EoG's functionality just to make browsing image properties possible - it has back and forward buttons and an image preview of its own (it has enough functionality to be a separate image properties viewing application in its own right!). Using a sidebar for properties would mean that the current image view and browsing interface (including the 'collection' thumbnails) could be used - which is far superior to what the current properties dialog has. A sidebar would be simpler and more elegant - fewer interface elements like the additional image preview would be required. * One further issue with the current properties dialog that this change would solve is the unusual way in which it updates when the image being viewed in the main window is changed. This is quite unconventional for GNOME apps (compare with Nautilus, for example) and is pretty bad, interaction wise. I'm pretty sure the HIG says something about this somewhere... I'd suggest that the sidebar be placed on the right side of the window - to indicate that the properties are subordinate to the image being viewed. I can provide mockups if necessary. This bug is similar to https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=540686 and https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=486364, but I think it is different enough to warrant its own report.
Created attachment 199527 [details] screenshot of metadata in sidebar I made a test trying to follow your mockup from https://live.gnome.org/EyeOfGnome/PlaceForNewIdeas/UIRefinements The biggest problem so far are the large data labels that are pretty long (esp. the Flash label) and hard to read.
Setting milestone. Will try to finish it this cycle.
It's not perfect yet, but maybe we can gather some feedback already. commit 7ac112f2dde1dcf76b5693d3036dd2d2625a193f Author: Felix Riemann <> Date: Mon Dec 19 18:20:30 2011 +0100 Make Exif/XMP summaries available as sidebar Makes the data from the properties dialog available as a sidebar. A button opens the details tab in the properties dialog. This is graphically still a bit roughg. Committing it in hopes to get some early feedback. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=616438 This problem has been fixed in the development version. The fix will be available in the next major software release. Thank you for your bug report.
That's great! Thanks Felix. :)
*** Bug 540686 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I missed this discussion entirely. My bad. I feel that somehow we're going back to the cluttered properties sidepan we used to have before 2.14 (or something like that). I don't particularly like it. I'd seriously vouch for having a more reduced set of properties displayed and probably even hiding the properties whose values are empty. Also, I don't understand how the mockups by Allan are connected with these here https://live.gnome.org/Design/Apps/Photos . It would be good to follow one set of mockups only, for consistency.
(In reply to comment #6) > I missed this discussion entirely. My bad. No problem. > I feel that somehow we're going back to the cluttered properties sidepan we > used to have before 2.14 (or something like that). I don't particularly like > it. > > I'd seriously vouch for having a more reduced set of properties displayed and > probably even hiding the properties whose values are empty. The old sidebar was cluttered IMHO because it used the listview that we now have in the properties dialog's details panel. Showing a reduced dataset should help a bit here. I guess we can try to implement the removal of empty values. The biggest problem I have so far with it is the restricted horizontal space we have in the sidebar, ellipsizing many entries.. > Also, I don't understand how the mockups by Allan are connected with these here > https://live.gnome.org/Design/Apps/Photos . It would be good to follow one set > of mockups only, for consistency. For now I guess, it's two applications. From how I understood the short discussion about Photos, we are going to make most of eog available as a shared library again, which both Photos and eog can use. This also makes sense IMHO because Photos focuses quite a bit on the collection management part which eog tries to go out of the way. Yet, both apps display images at the end, so there should be room for sharing code.
> > For now I guess, it's two applications. From how I understood the short > discussion about Photos, we are going to make most of eog available as a shared > library again, which both Photos and eog can use. This also makes sense IMHO > because Photos focuses quite a bit on the collection management part which eog > tries to go out of the way. Yet, both apps display images at the end, so there > should be room for sharing code. I was actually looking into hacking on Photos, and was wondering if EOG or GtkImageView was suggested as the base. Is this discussion going on in public anywhere?
Hi John. It would be great if you wanted to help with Photos! We can discuss it on #gnome-design and #gnome-os. As far as the base - I'll leave it to you experts :)