[Goodies-dev] Suggestions to enhance Ristretto

[Denís Fernández Cabrera]

Hello again,

2008/5/5 Stephan Arts <stephan at xfce.org>:
>  >  - 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.

That would be helpful.

>  >  - 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.

Mind you, I like the way it works now! It is a very nice feature of
the viewer. Just adding that "selected image" highlight and the
mouse-wheel-scroll would make it perfect for me (because the "smooth
scrolling when switching to next image" is just eyecandy).

>  >  - 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 ^_~.

Actually, I was surprised as to how smooth the click-and-drag
scrolling is in the thumbnail bar... I was expecting it to be at least
jumpy, but it is very smooth. I wrote that under the assumption that
either scrolling the bar by mouse or by an automatic action wouldn't
make much difference --- but as you say, there are other priorities.

>  >  - 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.

Perhaps it's just me, but I am very keyboard-driven. And I think that,
in general, having a good set of keyboard shortcuts is a very
important usability measure (Inkscape, for example, has a wonderfully
coherent and complete collection of shortcuts... but I digress).

I'd provide these keybindings:
- Mousewheel on image: changes to the next image.
- Mousewheel on thumbnail bar: slides the bar (without changing the image).
- Ctrl + Mousewheel on image: Zoom. This is a wel-known shortcut
elsewhere (Inkscape, Firefox, OpenOffice...) so it is best to remain
consistent.
- + (plus): Zoom in.
- - (minus): Zoom out.
- 1: 100% scale.
- 0: Best fit of the image in the window.
- ...?
- Perhaps keybindings to navigate through directories would be nice,
too... But this would need the interface to be changed to display
folders, and I don't think that is good.


I have also noticed another maor issue with the usability of
Ristretto: Drag and Drop. One should be able to:
- Drag and drop a folder or a group of images or a single image from
Thunar to Ristretto.
- Drag and drop an image from the tumbnail bar to somewhere in Thunar
(thus moving the image file).
- The same, but draggin from the visualization area for the image.
- Drag-and-drop to other applications too, like Inkscape or OpenOffice.

This would make Ristretto + Thunar a very powerful combination, with
the latter acting as a surrogate file browser.

>  >  - 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.

Thanks!

>  >  ...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.

My pleasure --- one of the things I like the most of Free Software is
being able to provide real feedback to the developers, and thank them
for their work as well.

Denís.

-- 
Denís Fernández Cabrera
mailto://denis@ceibes.org
http://gatonegro.ceibes.org