[Goodies-dev] Suggestions to enhance Ristretto

[Stephan Arts]

On Mon, May 5, 2008 at 9:49 AM, Denís Fernández Cabrera
<denis at ceibes.org> wrote:
> Hello,
>
>  I am not sure if this is the appropiate place to post these
>  suggestions, but I wasn't able to find a better email address or wiki
>  page. Please excuse me if this list is only reserved for code
>  developers, or something similar.
>
>  I have been trying Ristretto --- the XFCE image viewer --- for some
>  days now, and I find it a very nice program: it is reasonably small
>  and reasonably fast, and it has a very nice user interface. I like the
>  way it presents the list of images, and how you can click-scroll
>  through them. It is also quite compact -- so much that it makes for a
>  great program to display images in a presentation.
>
>  However, I have noticed a few areas where (IMHO) it could be enhanced.
>  Some of them are usability issues, and some are mere eyecandy:
>
>  - Scrolling the mouse wheel in the main image view displays the next
>  image, and that is good. But scrolling on the image list shouldn't
>  change the main image --- instead, it should slide the image list
>  itself, much as in click+dragging (ideally with smooth animation).
>  This would make the program more useable with the mouse.
>

Hmm, interesting. I could add a config-option for that behaviour in
the preferences dialog.

>  - the "displayed" (or "selected") image in the image list shoudl
>  appear highlighted somehow (subtly) beyond having it placed in the
>  center of the list.

The thumbnail-bar needs to be fine-tuned, indeed. It appears 'active'
most of the time. But it indeed needs some love.

>
>  - It would also be nice if, when the centered image changes (because
>  you hit spacebar and move to a new image, for example), the image list
>  displaced itself smoothly to the new position, instead of just jumping
>  there.

Sorry, won't help you there (for now anyways). It will require quite a
bit of processing-power, and I'd like to improve the performance
before considering such a battery-hog ^_~.

>
>  - Keys + and - should be linked to zooming in and out. Likewise, 1
>  should display the image in real-size, and 0 should make a best-fit of
>  the image in the available space.

Interesting, I see that the keyboard-shortcut editor should be pushed
a bit further forward on my TODO list.

>
>  - There should also be a hotkey to show/hide the image list. This
>  would be especially handy when in fullscreen mode. Perhaps imagelist
>  should be deactivated by default when in fullscreen.

Try <Ctrl>-t, this toggles the thumbnail-bar.

>
>  ...And i think that's it! For the rest, thanks to the developers for
>  such a great job in this little application. It's nice and useful!
>
>  Denís.


You' re welcome.

Regards,
Stephan