Beagle QuickSearch Tiles
Oct 19 2004
I tried to make use of the tile widgets that beagle hackers seem to enjoy in the QuickSearch Applet. While I think it could work, it is a bit more demanding on screen estate and in my opinion a little bit too much information at once than the initial list mockup.
Another major issue is keyboard navigation, since we need to have two columns of tiles (600px of width may be too little for 4 tiles vertically). I hope we can do with tabs in the following order:
First tab in the query entry will focus the result area, first tile specifically.
Cursor keys now navigate within results (ie toggles tiles).
Tab focuses the action toolbar within the tile.
Addition tab focuses the search entry again.
I need to add proper actions and animate the mockup if this is decided to be a better approach than the first one. But I realised I need to finish the F-Spot logo/icon before I can do that ;). Stay tuned and feel free to blog/e-mail me your opinions.
Gimp Layer Groups
And btw, I REALLY, REALLY miss layer groups for mockups like these. I have 12 layers even if I merge everything that’s doable without losing editability. I’d be at about 30 if we didn’t have floats.
In fact, I talked to mitch on IRC and there is even a better solution for this. Because layer groups define the physical structure of the image, the overlay order, one could be able to define groups independent of the layer stack. Selecting particular group would toggle the link layers button so one could easily move stuff around by defining these groups.
Gtk+ Rant
And while I’m in the rant mode, can any brave gtk+ hacker look at bug #143668? While Gimp 2.1 is rocking, this is making it unbearable to open up image windows (something you do all the time). I mean applying an unsharp mask takes less than opening an image! Not only because the gimp folks sped up umask a lot, but mainly because the menu populating is insanely slow. Nasty, nasty regression. Bug #153727 seems to relate to this a bit.