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Bug 683813 - Allow selecting background color
Allow selecting background color
Status: RESOLVED OBSOLETE
Product: gnome-control-center
Classification: Core
Component: Background
3.5.x
Other Linux
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: Control-Center Maintainers
Control-Center Maintainers
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2012-09-11 17:30 UTC by Alexandre Prokoudine
Modified: 2021-06-09 16:24 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---



Description Alexandre Prokoudine 2012-09-11 17:30:29 UTC
As seen in the liveUSB with GNOME 3.5.91, only predefined background colors can be set via UI. The custom colors are only available via gsettings now.

This seems a bit too restrictive. Setting a custom color now involves:

1. Firing up some application that has a color picker, like GIMP or Gpick (or even installing one, and you need to know it by the name).
2. Grabbing a color.
3. Copying it to clipboard.
4. Installing dconf-editor (you need to know it by the name too).
5. Spending half a day looking for the setting ("I'm an artist, I speak in hyperbole" (c))
6. Pasting the value.

Alternatively:

1. Fire up GIMP.
2. Create an image the size of the screen size.
3. Fill it with a certain color.
4. Export to PNG.
5. Add to the list of backgrounds.

I'm not quite sure you've really thought it through, folks.

If there is a reasoning behind this decision other than mocking GNOME haters or training advanced Google users, I'd like to know it, please :)

The background chooser in 3.4 was a bit hairy in the UI department, but it wasn't THAT bad. I'm confident that you can solve this without oversimplifying things.
Comment 1 Alexandre Prokoudine 2012-09-11 18:09:28 UTC
Some more comments.

If I remember the former GNOME HIG correctly, it strongly advised against the
use of overlapping modal dialogs.

I understand that GNOME 3 relies on slightly different principles and
approaches to UI. Nevertheless right now the only thing that the Background
applet does is showing the currently selected wallpaper, and clicking it opens
a modal dialog that overlaps the initial one.

That means that should the custom color picker be returned, opening the color
picker dialog will result in the third-layer dialog.

So, in the first place, the question is: what is the reasoning behind moving
customization to a second-level dialog? Why is it considered helpful to only
show the background image by default in the applet?

I've looked at all the other applets, and correct me if I'm wrong, but there
are only few ones where second-layer dialogs appear at all, and in all of the
first-level dialog allows doing more things other than just firing up a
second-level dialog.

The way I see it, moving actual background selection back to the first-level
dialog would make the actual process of selection faster.

So, once again, I'd be interested to find out the rationale behind all these
changes.
Comment 2 André Klapper 2012-09-12 08:15:37 UTC
(In reply to comment #1)
> So, once again, I'd be interested to find out the rationale behind all these
> changes.

My guess is bug 675460 / bug 676539.
Comment 3 Alexandre Prokoudine 2012-10-06 22:27:34 UTC
Well... In #676539 William says:

"There are a few things that I would like to improve in the background settings... Show the selected wallpaper in larger size".

He doesn't explain the need for changes, he merely says he wants it that way.

Excuse me, but I was asking about _reasoning_ :)

Seeing larger wallpapers is OK, but why would I want to stare at a dialog with just one single wallpaper that is already applied to my desktop anyway, when I can just use Winkey/Cmd+D to look at it?

In #675460 William says:

"Apart from the selection being odd there is a usability issue that came up in
user testing.

1. The color selection is in the position that is normally used for a close or
apply button and I observed a user try to use it for that

2. In the default scenario the color is completely invisible. I observed a user
confused that the background did not change color based on her selection."

Mmm... So all the UI butchering happened because of one user?

I do agree that the previous dialog had certain issues (and I said so before), but it doesn't explain the need to introduce all the issues highlighted above.
Comment 4 Dylan McCall 2012-11-05 16:55:21 UTC
At risk of launching a design discussion on a bug tracker, is there a reason showing the selected wallpaper in larger size can't be handled by the large wallpaper that is already there, at full size, on the desktop?

For example, could this panel ask GNOME Shell to please fade all windows except System Settings to 10% opacity? That way the selected wallpaper would be clearly visible, and you would be able to move the wallpaper choosing dialog into the main window.

If that is considered a solution, I would be happy to work on it at some point. I've been meaning to play with the shell for a while.
Comment 5 Christian Hergert 2014-11-07 09:49:24 UTC
I would just like to be able to select one of the non-14 blessed background colors. Can we have a + somewhere to add a new color using the color picker?
Comment 6 André Klapper 2018-09-15 19:06:19 UTC
Duplicate: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/issues/192
Comment 7 André Klapper 2018-09-15 19:06:44 UTC
Workaround in https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=743790#c2
Comment 8 André Klapper 2021-06-09 16:24:38 UTC
GNOME is going to shut down bugzilla.gnome.org in favor of gitlab.gnome.org.
As part of that, we are mass-closing older open tickets in bugzilla.gnome.org
which have not seen updates for a longer time (resources are unfortunately
quite limited so not every ticket can get handled).

If you can still reproduce the situation described in this ticket in a recent
and supported software version, then please follow
  https://wiki.gnome.org/GettingInTouch/BugReportingGuidelines
and create a new bug report at
  https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/-/issues/

Thank you for your understanding and your help.