Comments on: You have unsaved changes…

By: Sadarax

Sadarax — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 09:26:03 +0000

I like the new system, but I would like to request the old option in the Gwenview configuration preferences for: “Silently discard all changes” be put back.

I realize that some changes cannot be undone, so perhaps when this “Automatically discard all changes” is enabled, the other permanent modification options are disabled?

I never save modifications from Gwenview to images. I always want whatever I do to the image to automatically be discard.

Thank you for your consideration. Gwenview 2 + looks great. I did not think the program could be improved but I was wrong.

By: Linking Links

Linking Links — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 06:41:49 +0000

Neat idea! But like many other I would prefer a button personally rather than a link.

By: mark cox

mark cox — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 23:57:59 +0000

Aurélien,
I like your mockups, i think it is a very interesting idea. Personally though, i would like to see a preferences checkbox ‘Always save reversible changes’ which would save lossless changes without asking the user. In that case your mocked-up save bar would only reflect ‘lossy’ changes.

Regards,
mark

By: krill

krill — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 06:47:19 +0000

like Bkuestorm I think the “unsaved flag” (which is a good idea by the way) should be more visible. A red floppy with a question mark next to or on top of it should be more visible

By: Aurélien

Aurélien — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 12:01:13 +0000

@Cornelius: What you describe would be nice, but it’s a bit too ambitious for my available amount of free time, sorry :-/

@jospoortvliet: I prefer keeping behavior consistent: if you go through all your images, fix orientations of some, adjust brightness on some others, I believe it’s more predictible to have to save all images (the “save all” link makes this quick) rather than only a few images automatically saved.

By: jospoortvliet

jospoortvliet — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 09:57:46 +0000

I just tried it from SVN, and it works great. I must say, the link-like text works fine, buttons might make it too big. But it’s up to you, of course.

Concerning what Cornelius just said (sorry to disagree, C, don’t attack me next time we meet), I think saving lossy stuff automatically is just a bit too much. Maybe you can save automatically, but notify the user and show an undo button when he/she switches to the next pic? Or ask the usability ppl…

Saving the lossless things like rotating by default is imho a good thing. Maybe don’t even notice the user. I don’t see why it is bad, ppl generally don’t get lossy vs lossless anyway – they don’t care much. They think smoothen & save & sharpen brings back the original. Of course, you can do that instead of complicated save or undo stuff!

By: Shuksh

Shuksh — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 01:29:32 +0000

I really admire the design principles being implemented by KDE4 apps. To be honest, I found Gwenview’s toolbars stacked on top of each other quite confusing – but the navigation tool bar with big icons and text looks so much simpler and more functional. It looks similar to Dolphin which is great – if more KDE apps are fine tuned for this simple design aspect, I’ll give up Gnome once and for all. Sorry for being a little offtopic!

By: Cornelius Schumacher

Cornelius Schumacher — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 22:58:10 +0000

I see where you are coming from and the save bar definitely is a smart idea. But from a point of a user is it really the solution? Why does the user have to care about saving at all?

It’s true, if you do a lossfull operation you can’t go back. But wait, if you store the original image or something clever like a diff or some extra data to algorithmically restore the original state, you can go back. It might be some effort to implement that and it might need some additional disk space, but it could relief the user from thinking about saving it all (and get rid of modal dialogs and stuff like that as well).

So what I as user would like to see is complete transparency of saving. If I modify an image it is stored as modified, but there is a way to get back to the original (maybe something like an “Undo Bar”?). This way I never get confused or annoyed by questions about saving, I never loose data and the program essentially behaves exactly as I want to. It does what it’s told to do so, no questions asked.

By: Aurélien

Aurélien — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 20:47:04 +0000

@zzx: I agree consistency is important, but I am not sure a lot of applications are in Gwenview situation, half document editors, half file browsers. The icons are a good idea, will give it a try.

@Jakob Petsovits: This was what I previously planned, but I believe it would make the application less predictible as it would be too difficult to understand whether an image would be automatically saved or not. The only drawback of this solution for you will be to select “Save All” when you leave the application (which reminds me I should add “Save All” to the quit dialog)

By: Aurélien

Aurélien — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 20:36:07 +0000

Thanks for all the nice feedback! It seems there is no clear winner in the choice between buttons and links. I will probably give buttons a try to see how they look.

I will also add some “bling” to make the save bar more visible, either slide-in or a background-color fade.

@bluestorm: I see what you mean, but on the other hand this icon is already used in the taskbar when a KDE application has unsaved changes, so it would be consistent to use it.

@vr: I will add the “unsaved icon” to the taskbar too, thanks for reminding me of this. However, I will probably keep the save bar at the top, since I believe it’s more like an extra toolbar.

@Robert Knight: You are right, I should add undo/redo support, especially when cropping and scaling is in.