GIMP 2.8 Will Sport a Redesigned UI 401
ceswiedler writes "Ars Technica's Ryan Paul previews the upcoming release of the GIMP. It will include a single-window mode where the user can dock toolbar windows and switch between images via tabs. There are other improvements as well, including docking support in multi-window mode and improvements to the text tool." To get this early preview, Paul compiled version 2.7.1 from the active development branch, along with its dependencies.
Smartest workflow move ....ever! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm glad they're doing this.
It makes it much easier to work on the images, instead of having to "mishap-click" on every single window, and having to click on the related window in order to get back into the image editor again. WAAAAY overdue, but finally here - good job guys!
Why only with tabs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not floating windows inside the main window?
Oh I know why: because the GTK designers don't like floating windows inside a window for whatever strange reason.
But great improvement nonetheless, kudos!
Re:Smartest workflow move ....ever! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the makers of a painting program should not say "use window manager X or Y". The makers of a painting program should ensure that their program works in a reasonable way on the system the user has.
User-friendlyness, you know?
Re:Smartest workflow move ....ever! (Score:3, Insightful)
In general, if you want user-friendlyness, open source software isn't the place to be looking
Re:Smartest workflow move ....ever! (Score:5, Insightful)
So now they're screwing up a totally fine UI and degenerate into the train wreck that's Photoshop. Nice.
I agree! How dare they give you the option to have a single-window mode that's turned off by default! Jerks!
Re:I really hate the GIMP UI changes. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Smartest workflow move ....ever! (Score:2, Insightful)
I have to admit when I was using GIMP under Windows 7, having multiple windows for different toolboxes + the image window was a pain in the arse. I couldn't get the tiling to work properly. I made the move to Kubuntu about a month ago and after the initial shock getting use to a new interface and configuring the desktop I found it definitely works as good as windows in many respects and better in others; such as being able to tile the separate toolboxes in GIMP and getting the window to snap to its nearest neighbor (something I couldn't figure out in Windows 7).
The interface changes I think will be ok. It's a "single-window mode" so I would assume that means if you don't want to use single window mode you don't have to.
Argh. (Score:1, Insightful)
Click-to-focus (and raise on focus) never made sense. It was a misunderstanding from the beginning.
Look -- my statement makes as much sense as yours. To each her own, OK?
Nice to have the choice. (Score:3, Insightful)
Multi-window is nice if you've got a ginormous wide-screen or multiple monitors. Multi-window on a smaller screen, or god forbid a laptop, is a real pain unless you live in it day-in day-out. Kudos for letting users choose the right tool for the job.
Re:Finally (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, this is always the problem that big software projects have... I don't claim that users are perfect and "know" what they want, but it has to be said: if you are making a USER interface, it's probably best if the USER gets some say in that and that you listen to the USERS especially when a large of them speak up. Other parts, sure, you can say "We don't work that way" but the user interface is sacred and your *only* interaction with the program as a user. Mess that up, you might as well not have the program at all.
And I'm sorry, but I'm a single-window person. I've work in IT for years and the *easiest* way to work is on a commandline or in a full-screen window (alt-tab's, multiple desktops etc. vital, of course). Rarely do I need two things side by side on the screen but when I do, it's usually TWO and that's it, and that's easily handled by tiling the windows. Bear in mind that I have 18 windows open on my machine at the moment, everything from instant messengers, shell sessions, folder views, web browsers, development environments etc. The only "non-full-screen" ones are two shell windows where I'm referring to one file in another and need to check consistency between the two, and the instant messengers (because they don't need full-screen, are minimised, and are only on the taskbar so that they flash when I get a message). MDI is an invaluable tool - I can't web-browse without my Opera tabs - and ignoring it because of some "religious" argument is stupid. I've seen even the cheapest paint programs offer a "Do you want an MDI or SDI interface?" dialog on first run... Serif software springs to mind.
The only other program I ever really used a lot that didn't do single-window nicely was some of the old versions of Visual Basic. But there they had a reason - you were designing a UI within an UI, so it's not an easy task to do.
At last, though, GIMP has woken up to the protests of almost *every* non-professional-user that's ever wanted to use it. When the new version is released, it will be downloaded and tried, if for no other reason than to add another number to the download stats for the single-window-capable versions.
Re:Smartest workflow move ....ever! (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the makers of a painting program should not say "use window manager X or Y".
They're not really saying "use window manager X or Y". They were saying "use any window manager you want as long as it supports feature X or Y" - a far more reasonable request.
Having simple pieces that all take responsibility of their own area is the *nix way; if managing windows is hard, that's not the application's fault, it's the window manager's fault. Why fix one application when you can fix all of the applications at once?
Now they're saying "since so many of you refuse to use a window manager that works, we're doing a workaround..." and then add, "but you could - you know - save time by using the current version with a window manager that's not broken. Just saying."
Re:Smartest workflow move ....ever! (Score:5, Insightful)
Focus-follows-mouse made no sense back in the old days with Solaris work stations. It still makes no sense.
It made sense for the stereotypical bearded Unix guy with nothing but 8 different XTerms open on his gigantic Sun monitor. None of his software used a mouse for input, so why not use it as an enhanced 2-dimensional task switcher?
Who cares about UI, but 16 bit per color... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Smartest workflow move ....ever! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Smartest workflow move ....ever! (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want "user friendliness" then perhaps you shouldn't be looking at the tools that have "everything and the kitchen sink". No matter how much you arrange the buttons and knobs you are still going to end up with something that looks like a 747 and deals with features you can't even name ( nevermind understand ).
If you want "easy", then look for an iPhoto knockoff rather than a Photoshop knockoff.
Forget the UI, change the name (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, I'd even take GIMPY (the GNU Image Manipulation Program for You), since that evokes a different, albeit still negative, emotional response.
The best suggestion I've heard is just drop GNU or make GNU separate from the acronym: IMP, GNU IMP.
Re:Much more important features missing (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed
Adjustment layers are a messed up paradigm from being stuck in a 1D compositing 'stack'. A node-based compositing workflow, however...
cinepaint seems to have gone nowhere particular fast simply because not enough people (read: businesses) were/are interested in this. It's sad, but there you go.
Seems pretty far off the priority list for most "serious artists".. unless the only serious artists are those who print their work and have it exhibited. Let's face it - most Photoshop users, and I admit I'm including all the warez kiddies and the family members they installed Photoshop for - will only ever used Photoshop to make images suitable for display on monitors; LCD ones at that.. they won't be bothering with even calibrating their display and making sure Photoshop uses that color profile information. By the time they do want a print - they'll either send it off to one of the many online printing services who have excellent staff who deal with RGB->CMYK(and then some) conversion if their machines flag out-of-gamut results, or they'll just send it to their own inkjet/color laser printer and not really care if the colors are a bit off.
You shouldn't have to 'get used to it' - although I agree that there's other areas that need love more than how one manages their windows; although 'losing' your layer window under some other non-GIMP-related because it's separate from everything else, or being fooled once again and trying to do a color adjustment in image A but ending up doing it in image B because you forgot that each window has its own little menu for doing these things.. can get quite annoying.
Now.. a unified transform tool and a macro recorder (not every artist wants to dive straight into script-fu.. which in itself isn't exactly the most human-readable of languages) - that's what I've been making donations for; although perhaps I should hire a programmer instead and pray to the OSS gods that they'll actually include the code, as I haven't seen any headway made into these areas.. just years and years of discussions.
At least there's a bit of a push for GEGL so maybe it won't be so swaptastic to work on large images anymore.
change the name? I'd prefer gamma correct colour! (Score:3, Insightful)
Hell, I'd even take GIMPY (the GNU Image Manipulation Program for You), since that evokes a different, albeit still negative, emotional response.
I wonder how the citizens of Gympie [wikipedia.org] would feel about that assertion!
Anyway, I'd rather that time were spent so that Gimp worked in linear colour space (~ 16 bits per channel) rather than botching all the operations in 8bit/channel sRGB. As it currently stands, filtering operations etc are wrong.
For example (at least in 2.6) it still thinks that the average of sRGB black and white is 0x808080, which is far too dark. It should be something more like (doing a back of the envelope calculation) 0xBABABABA.
Re:Smartest workflow move ....ever! (Score:5, Insightful)
They were saying "use any window manager you want as long as it supports feature X or Y" - a far more reasonable request.
What if feature X or Y drives the user fricking insane?
The first time I used a Unix workstation 20 years ago, I was appalled by the focus-follows-mouse misfeature. It turns moving your mouse into navigating a minefield. Luckily, more sane desktop environments have been developed in the decades since.
I will never, ever enable focus-follows mouse. Nor will the vast majority of the population. I would switch to Microsoft Windows rather than suffer such abuse from a window manager. So the request is *not* reasonable.
Re:Why only with tabs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe because gimp is an image manipulation program, not a window manager? MDI is, and always has been, a terrible workaround for systems that suck at window management.
Re:Smartest workflow move ....ever! (Score:3, Insightful)
if managing windows is hard, that's not the application's fault, it's the window manager's fault.
If everyone followed that logic, we would never have had tabbed browsing.
Re:Smartest workflow move ....ever! (Score:5, Insightful)
I was appalled by the focus-follows-mouse misfeature.
Oddly, what you're calling a misfeature is what many would call click-to-focus. Click to focus needless requires extra clicking. Now do keep in mind there is a difference between raise on focus and focus follows mouse. I hate raise on focus but focus follows mouse is extremely superior to click-to-focus. Why? Because click-to-focus needlessly forces you to waste screen real estate when referencing one screen and inputting on another. This is even more so as you continue to add more and more references screens.
Like many technology related issues, many times is a case of what's different is bad or ugly. You were likely taught to use a computer with click-to-focus and therefore anything which is not that is bad. But once you get used to it, the click-to-focus style of using interfaces, assuming the interface is designed to work with it (*cough* no windows *cough*), anything else sucks and sucks badly.
So if you enjoy needlessly clicking for the sake of needlessly clicking, then by all means continue to use click-to-focus. But for those of us that enjoy fewer clicks and higher efficiency of interface, you'll not want to go back to the insanity which is click-to-focus.
I guess if you're one of those users who maximizes every window and never multi-tasks, then there is nothing wrong with click-to-focus. But if not, you need to give it a try for a week or two and you'll be wondering what the heck you were thinking. Of course, this assumes you're not using Windows, which is specifically designed to break focus follows mouse behavior. There, its usable but IMO, a wash because of Windows' UI behaviors.
Re:Smartest workflow move ....ever! (Score:3, Insightful)
Is the layers menu actually under "layers" now instead of "dialogs"?
Can you go to the file menu and save from there or do you have to right click the image?
These are sorts of inconsistencies that that "luddite" photoshop UI doesn't have to contend with.
the GIMP UI is like a toilet with a rope attached to the flush mechanism, with a handwritten note attached to the handle on the outside that says "we'll implement this sometime later". Sure it works, but if you use it every day you want it to work properly.
Re:Smartest workflow move ....ever! (Score:4, Insightful)
None of his software used a mouse for input, so why not use it as an enhanced 2-dimensional task switcher?
I don't understand. If you're using your mouse for input (as I very frequently do), doesn't it make sense that your mouse would be over the application that you're interacting with, which at least suggests it should have focus? If you're using the mouse for input, that implies clicking, which would give that app focus in click-to-focus anyway.
I'm not saying there's something wrong with your preference, I just don't seem to get the usage model that inspires the preference. The more graphical apps I'm using, the more I appreciate focus-follows-mouse.
Re:Smartest workflow move ....ever! (Score:3, Insightful)
As a counter-anecdote, I find focus-follows-mouse absolutely indispensable. I will go to nearly any lengths to enable it, even following obscure and hard to find tutorials on what registry values to change in order to get that behavior in Windows Vista. Clicking to change windows is very jarring to me, because things aren't working the way I expect them to.
I consider Raise-on-focus to be a similar degree of abomination as you feel focus-follows-mouse to be. (If I wanted it raised, I would have clicked on it!)
Different users have different likes and expectations. I'm sorry you don't like focus following the mouse, in much the same way that I am sad to hear when people dislike sushi.
Re:Smartest workflow move ....ever! (Score:4, Insightful)
Take a look at Gimp 2.2; it's - I believe - the last version with the "old" UI, which was very intuitive and convenient to use. They only screwed it up in the newer versions due to reasons completely unknown to me.
I have found the complete opposite. the old gimp UI was impossible to navigate. It's like blender, where everything about the UI is just wrong, anyone with even the slightest bit of experience on similar software simplt cannot use it.
3 horizontal windows? whats going on? I've been using various graphic programs for 15 years now, never needing a manual for any of them, until running into gimp, the 1st program I souldn't solve intuitively, through trial and error.
The new interface has the toolbar that is common to every other graphics program in existence, so it doesn't require a series of tutorials just to know where to get started. The newer gimp UI is a significant improvement. I was able to go straight from photoshop to gimp without needed a help file (which is a good thing, since Ubuntu doesn't seem to include the gimp help files) The only major problems left with gimps AI are dealing with layers; pasting is especially cumbersome.
Re:Smartest workflow move ....ever! (Score:3, Insightful)
Oddly, what you're calling a misfeature is what many would call click-to-focus. Click to focus needless requires extra clicking
I'll take ALL of those wasted milliseconds times ten over accidentally typing in the wrong field because I bumped my mouse.
You say "extra clicking" like tapping a mouse button is equivalent to a 4 hour forced march with 30lbs of equipment.
Re:Inkscape won't run on netbooks (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not the user's job to change themes. It's the toolkit's job to detect when a theme is overpadded for a given application and automatically correct for it.
Sorry, but as much as I want applications to automatically do stuff on this one I have to disagree.
The application ought to honor the styles set by the Windows manager, and not run off and do its own thing. How is the application suppose to know that the user did not want it overpadded? Or do you really want every single application to have all kinds of little settings to modify the display and break the central theming provided by the Windows Manager?
Re:Smartest workflow move ....ever! (Score:3, Insightful)
So if you enjoy needlessly clicking for the sake of needlessly clicking, then by all means continue to use click-to-focus.
I don't do much needless clicking, because I keep my hands on the keyboard and use Alt+Tab if I can. The mouse is relegated to secondary status, only used in the rare cases when it's worth taking my hands away from the more productive keyboard.
That means that most of the time I really don't want to worry about where the mouse cursor is, and I certainly don't want it on top of the window I'm working on, and I *really* don't want to worry about what happens if I accidentally bump it.
Re:"... Two Steps Back" (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, you can lose information by saving in certain formats. That's why they show you a warning dialog if you would. If they're worried about users losing the information anyway, make the dialog friendlier.
A real problem is that the new behavior is completely unintuitive in some regards. Open a PNG file, edit and save it. You get asked where to save your new XCF file because "Save" means "save as XCF", not "save in the current format"; for that you'd go to "Export" (which doesn't allow you to choose your format; that would be "Export As").
It also makes the menu less intuitive. I don't care about what the GIMP does internally, when I want my picture written to the disk I want to save it as a PNG, not export it. "Save as" is the logical place to look for a way to save in various formats.
And they don't have an "Import" menu item for opening files in a non-XCF format. If I can't natively save to non-XCF files, why can I natively read them? File formats tht are alien enough to require export functionality also require import funcationality to be used in most other programs.
We end up with a weird hybrid approach that isn't consistent with itself on whether non-XCF formats are considered native or not. Cue the people who look at the GIMP for a few minutes and conclude that it's no alternative to Paint.NET or Photoshop because it doesn't support PNG and JPG well enough to include them in the save dialog.
It would b more reasonable if they renamed "Save (as)" to "Save as XCF (to)" and "Export (as)" to "Save as other format (to)". Bonus points of the menu item for "Save as other format" repaces "other format" with the name of the current format if applicable.
Re:Smartest workflow move ....ever! (Score:3, Insightful)
Focus follows mouse has broken semantics. It only works with mouse pointer hiding. It doesn't work if you have another means of switching focus (like alt-tab) because if you bump the mouse then you end up focused on the last window you focused with the mouse. If you mouse to nowhere, you also lose focus entirely. Sloppy focus fixes this last problem, but now most of us have a desktop window and that gets focus, so now sloppy focus is deprecated. Mouse hiding is a misfeature because now you have to find the mouse when you want to move it. Click to focus only falls down for textual applications like terminal windows or text editors; in all other cases you're going to be clicking things in the windows anyway, so it's okay for them to not focus until you click in them. So if you can bend your head around the conflict between task switching with the mouse and doing it with the keyboard, or if you never use GUI applications then I guess focus-follows-mouse is reasonable. For everyone else, click-to-focus makes more sense.