GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 693014
Redesign the welcome / startup assistant dialog
Last modified: 2015-10-20 13:20:54 UTC
Currently (0.15.2), PiTiVi uses a separate, smaller window as a welcome screen, showing latests projects and asking to create a new one. Some GNOME app mockups feature a welcome screen integrated into the app's main window. An interesting example is the Gedit Dashboard plugin (http://seilo.geekyogre.com/2011/11/gedit-dash-0-1/) which allows you to see thumbnails of the latest opened files. It would be cool if such a system was implemented into PiTiVi.
I've been trying to think about this for months, but so far have not found a clearly defined solution. I basically need the GNOME design team to help with this, or someone well versed in usability design, familiar with GTK and the two modes of operation of pitivi. Detailed wireframes/mockups detailing every aspect of the expected workflow are welcome. Your solution needs to take into account: - The philosophy of non-intrusiveness of the welcome dialog: http://jeff.ecchi.ca/blog/2010/11/23/startup-assistant/ ; namely... if it is embedded in the main maindow or some other widget, this raises the question of when/how to dismiss it. It might mean having a "Skip/Close/Get out of my face" button, which I'm not terribly a fan of. - The two modes of operation of the UI (all in one window for single-screen setups vs detached utility windows for more flexible setups): http://jeff.ecchi.ca/blog/2012/11/15/persistent-tab-states-render-ux-polish-and-other-things/ and the challenges this entails. It must work nicely in both modes. - It must be doable purely in GTK. No custom UI widget hacks. - The eventual/potential demise of our menus in favor of an appmenu (see also bug #679471)
Created attachment 236958 [details] screenshot For reference, here's a screenshot of the current welcome dialog, sitting on top of the main window. It is not set to be a normal modal dialog type because that would take away the window decorations... but this causes some problems when it comes to window z-order and the "detached tabs" mode where we have a bunch of floating utility windows and the modality of the welcome dialog then becomes much less clear.
Created attachment 238782 [details] GNOME IDE mockup - launch screen Here is, for reference, a start screen mockup made by the Design Team for the "GNOME IDE" project (https://live.gnome.org/Design/Apps/IDE).
Created attachment 238783 [details] GNOME IDE mockup - new project screen With this mockup and the previous one, it seems we have a workflow similar to the current PiTiVi one : first a list of projects, then an "project settings" window if you've chosen to create a new project before.
I spoke with Hylke Bons at GUADEC today to get his opinion on - How to better use the space and be better-looking - Which widgets matter and which ones don't - Whether or not this should be "embedded" in the main window or remain a separate window. He feels that it should remain a separate modal dialog rather than an embedded widget, and that we should provide large thumbnails for the projects; we should use our own iconview (or grid widget) instead of using the GTK Recent List widget.
Created attachment 250608 [details] guadec 2013 mockup Simple wireframe/mockup that Hylke made in a few minutes.
Created attachment 250610 [details] guadec 2013 mockup (PNG) Replace the SVG file so you can actually look at it outside of Inkscape/in a browser.
Created attachment 271953 [details] Welcome Dialog redesign v0 So, let me throw my 5 coins here. This is a simple UI demonstrating my personal view of a good, updated and coherent welcome dialog. It uses new GTK+ widgets, like GtkHeaderBar and GtkFlowBox, and the absolutely amazing symbolic icons. This is just a initial mockup, and I hope it'll be useful as the initial step.
Created attachment 271954 [details] Welcome dialog (python script) This is the minimal python application I wrote in order to visualize the UI.
Georges Basile, this proof of concept UI looks very nice! This raises some interesting questions: - The placement of buttons across all the four corners of the window, with some being at the top and some being at the bottom, seems a bit random. But that's really a minor problem, nothing to worry about; if someday we allow users to configure the keyboard shortcuts (in the prefs dialog), the keyboard shortcuts button becomes unneccessary. - The use of an iconview (or flowbox) instead of the textual GtkRecentChooserWidget brings the hairy question of "project" thumbnails, for which I've taken the time to file a new bug detailing the result of an initial design discussion: bug #727319 - Instead of making or own custom implementation (and having more complex code), one could argue that we could/should contribute to Gtk's RecentChooser widget to make it able to use a flowbox iconview-like display mode for all apps to benefit from. Filed bug #727321 for that, just in case ;)
Contributing to Gtk+'s RecentChooser is excelent. We should refine the redesign of the welcome dialog while work on this. BTW, is this UI good enought for us to use as a base for the refinements? About the buttons' placement, I imagined that "main actions" should be placed on top bar, while "options" stay at the bottom bar. This is the current desin trend with GNOME, and keeps Pitivi consistent with the environment. Also, should we use the brand new Gtk.ActionBar widget, which was designed for exactly this use case?
This bug has been migrated to https://phabricator.freedesktop.org/T3015. Please use the Phabricator interface to report further bugs by creating a task and associating it with Project: Pitivi. See http://wiki.pitivi.org/wiki/Bug_reporting for details.