27 Oct 2003 sisob   » (Master)

Defaults Wh%&e

Some people don't get why I'm a defaults wh%&e. A lot of Linux users are happy to spend time getting things the way they like it, and a lot of them have unusual ways of working - either way defaults are of no interest to them.

For me it's about pride. When I show people linux/Gnome for the first time they generally know that I'm in some way involved with it's development, so I want it to look good, and be easy to use, so that I can be proud of what I am showing.


Gnome Wallpaper Chooser

Dobey has Proposed his new background chooser but jdub
doesn't like it
and seems to think that it's designed from a theme designer's point of view, and not a user's.

<img alt="Screenshot-Gnome-wallpaper-properties.png" src="http://sisob.tuxfamily.org/archives/Screenshot-Gnome-wallpaper-properties-thumb.png" width="250" height="280" border="0" />

Above is what I'd mostly like to see the theme chooser look like. This is dobey's code but Gimped to have the images in a 3x3 grid.

The basic principles behind this, that I feel make it better than the current background chooser are:

1. The user should have to use the file selector to find wallpapers. The wallpapers. that came with their distro/desktop as well as wallpapers they have added should be easily found and used.

2. Each wallpaper tends to make sense only as either tiled, centered, streched or scaled. The user should only have to choose which one each image is once, and the system should make a decent guess at what it should be. Images shipped with the distro/desktop should be set to the mode that makes sense for them by default.

3. The user/distributer should be able to select a background color scheme to go with translucent wallpapers.

It was also said that background choosing is not important enough to warrant much magic, but I would disagree. Every dialog counts...

Note: I wrote about this extensively a few months back.


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