Last February during the Zeitgeist hackfest my former GSoC student Michal Hruby convinced me to hack a dash for gedit (it was for gedit 2 sadly) that looked like this…
Today based on the mockups of my previous post i rewrote it to work with the latest gedit. Its 90% working now but I am not sure about the usability to be honest, thus i need more info on how people use gedit. Right now the code is almost done and I am torn between the following 2 designs (these are actual images of my running gedit)…
If you have better suggestions please tell me! I am developing this as a plugin so everybody will be able to test it. I will upload the code soon…
I like the second one better. It feels more open and clean than the first one
This is awesome! Either of the designs looks fine to me, just bring on the feature!
I’m not sure it’s good to keep this as a tab. May be it would be possible to have this as a way to navigate between text files, behind the tabs view. I’m scared that if it’s on a specific tab, it will only confuse user by adding a tab which is not a text file. I don’t think it’s a great solution, but may be a button could allow accessing this dash.
I’d say definately the first version since it puts more emphasis on the filename which is a little lost in the second version. Maybe I’d do it without the 1 pixel border and without the gradient in the grey.
Regarding the concerns of guillemin: This will screen will be the content of a new (empty and unsaved) textfile I think or am I wrong?
The first one looks cleaner and its button like previews make it obvious where to click. I’m really looking forward to see this into stock GNOME, this is the integration of Zeitgeist I’ve always longed for. Way better than putting the Zeitgeist stuff into yet another “search” application
Really like the second one.
The tab is not a problem to me as long as its name can be easily distinguished from the real documents. In this matter, a chromium-like solution would be nice. (“New tab”, or something like that.)
Second one is awesome!
I like the first one becouse it have filetype icons. In the preview on second and third mockups i can’t see anything useful.
Second one is awesome!
Second one is awesome))
Third Dash is my favourite.
Really like the 2nd one. Pure awesomness!
Third or second Dash is my favourite.
Second one is very nice
1st version of the Gnome
2nd version of Chrome
Third option – is something similar to his!
Although the topic of windows and icons by the 1st best))) and then somehow I do not really faenza (
as well as probably the best 2nd option!
Just to add to the 50/50 split… I like the first one.
The idea of when opening gedit it gives you, instead of a blank page, but recently used items and also the ‘new page’ is a wonderful idea.
This looks really cool. Two ideas:
When I open a file in gedit it takes me to the same character position as when I closed that same file. Would it be possible for the previews to reflect that?
Could you make the “New Document” as large and easy to click on as the previewed documents?
I’m not sure the content preview itself will help much with recognizing the document. Especially when it comes to sourcecode that has usually imports or license text at the beginning of the file. Short of a better way to categorize the file the path might be the best approach to recognizing a file.
I see two general cases.
a) (where the hierarchically lowest folder(s) give a good estimate)
Documents/this/file
Documents/that/file
and b) (where the hierachically lowest folders are similar although the files have little in common.)
Projects/Zeitgeist/gedit-plugin/src/bla/file
Projects/Zeitgeist/firefox-plugin/src/bla/file
Projects/FooProject/src/file
If you can find a way to recognize the interesting part of the path that might give you a better way to categorize or recognize what a file contains and in what context it belongs. The user can so actually guess what file is hidden behind each choice.
The third is the best!
The “previews” are just visual clutter, adding noise without bringing any benefit to the table. It’s harder to scan for filenames since there is an overload of text.
Drop the “preview”, brig back file type icons, maybe display some other meta info (last modified date, parent folder, etc.).
Other than that, good work, keep it up
After some further thoughts on this, taking into account my own work habits, I’ve come up with some suggestions.
First my usual work-flow with gedit includes:
1. opening existing files directly, no need for “recently & frequently used” files in this case.
2. opening gedit to quickly write or copy some text, also no need for “recently & frequently used” files.
3. opening gedit to work on some file I’ve recently worked on
Most of the time I either do the 1. or 2. case, with 3. being very rare.
In all but the 3. case, “recently & frequently used” is either not useful, or in the case of 2. even annoying if I would have to click on “new” after opening a “blank” gedit every time.
Since the functionality of “recently & frequently used” is clearly useful in the 3. case and when I want to open a recent file while working I would suggest the following.
1. Display this as a “Recent activity” tab, by default (there should be an option to change this) display it when opening a new instance of gedit, don’t display it as part of “Untitled document”.
2. Have the ability to open this tab at any time during gedit use, by having “Recent activity” option available in the “View” menu.
3. Integrate this functionality into the “recently open files” in the drop down of “Open” toolbar button.
This way you expose this functionality when needed, without having to compromise usability.
I like the second one. Very Chrome like. If you add a file icon to the front of the file name it would add another visual clue to enable faster selection. Maybe some meta info on mouse over might be cool. Just some thoughts.
I agree with others who say that this should not be a tab. I would even go so far as to say that it’s things like this that make up the last 1% of “polish” that people claim (with good reason, often) open source applications lack. Functionally, sure, you could let slide having non-document stuff in a document tab. But conceptually it’s all wrong. (It’s particularly all wrong if you consider the tab title, “Untitled Document 1″, along with the contents of this page. In what possible world is this in any way an untitled document? And 1 in particular?)
Very cool
, I think it would be better if you add “pin” features for the preview.
[...] giornata di ieri lo stesso Lotfy ha pubblicato nel suo blog il rinnovamento estetico del suo prodotto, che possiamo ammirare all’inizio del post. [...]
Second one is awesome!
The first one, that one with icons rather than thumbnails. The thumbnails don’t seem distinctive enough to be useful; they look distracting.
[...] giornata di ieri lo stesso Lotfy ha pubblicato nel suo blog il rinnovamento estetico del suo prodotto, che possiamo ammirare all’inizio del post. [...]
Third!
… and still no code folding …
Second one is awesome, but third also looks pretty, i think.
First, but I like the clean look. Plus I’m always gonna be biased towards something that prevents me having to hunt for my glasses…
Third Dash is my favourite.
Second one is awesome!
It’s very well-looking!!!
And black icons is somting new, and I like it!!!
From those i’ll choce second one. But it’ll be great if you add type icons from first to it
The second one.
The previews are quite visually noisy, but might be useful if they were fully scrollable (much like they are on OS X with Finder and QuickLook).
How about a compromise between the two (again taking inspiration from OS X QuickLook), where you go with the icons, but the preview is accessible in a tooltip or something as you mouse over it or click some kind of “Preview” button beside or embedded in the icon?
I agree with others that this doesn’t really make sense in a Tab. This sort of design should really be the basis of a new GNOME-wide File Open dialog.
Third Dash is my favourite!
Third Dash is my favourite.
I choose the second one. It’s the most beautiful, and it’s like Chrome New Tab