question about scrollbars in cheese

[Daniel G. Siegel]

hi there!

we want to add a patch to cheese, which adds the eog scrollbar to the
media thumbnail bar in cheese. so far everything is ready, we just have
a question about the scrollbar:

see screen1.jpg, there is much place left (where the red marked box is).
if there are enough items in it, scrolling gets activated and it looks
like screen2.jpg (please ignore the other red marks and duplicate
arrows).

now, is it better to show the scrollbar always or to live with the
space?

thanks for your comments!

daniel

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[Reinout van Schouwen]

Hi Daniel,

Op maandag 11-08-2008 om 21:40 uur [tijdzone +0200], schreef daniel g.
siegel:

> see screen1.jpg, there is much place left (where the red marked box is).
> if there are enough items in it, scrolling gets activated and it looks
> like screen2.jpg (please ignore the other red marks and duplicate
> arrows).
>
> now, is it better to show the scrollbar always or to live with the
> space?

Well if you look how EOG does it, they choose the option to live with
the space.

Just an idea: you could try to make the arrow buttons stick out a bit
more, maybe even make them "electric", much like the gtk+ menu scrolling
buttons. So you could just hover over them to make the collection view
scroll sideways.

regards,

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[Calum Benson]

On 11 Aug 2008, at 20:40, daniel g. siegel wrote:
>
> see screen1.jpg, there is much place left (where the red marked box  
> is).
> if there are enough items in it, scrolling gets activated and it looks
> like screen2.jpg (please ignore the other red marks and duplicate
> arrows).
>
> now, is it better to show the scrollbar always or to live with the
> space?

Well, those screenshots don't really offer a fair comparison, because  
they doesn't show what the scrollbar would show if there was only  
thumbnail :)  (From the behaviour of other apps, though, I'd assume it  
shows the scrollbar shaft taking up the full width of the scrollbar...?)

Personally I prefer to see the empty space than an "unscrollable"  
scrollbar-- it gives you immediate feedback that you're seeing  
everything that there is to see.  In an ideal world, perhaps the  
visual appearance of a "full" scrollbar would be less intrusive than  
it is today[1]-- maybe something to think about for gtk 3.0 :)

(As an aside, I'm slightly confused as to why you still have left and  
right buttons either side of the thumbnail view, in addition to those  
in the scrollbar?  That sends rather mixed messages to the user,  
perhaps suggesting that they would do different things.,,)

Cheeri,
Calum.

[1] E.g. see attached screenshot from Apple Mail, albeit for a  
vertical scrollbar--the trough is always shown, so you don't get  
content jumping around as the bar appears/disappears, but the buttons  
and shaft are gone so it has far less visual weight than a "full"  
scrollbar.

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CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
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[Reinout van Schouwen]

Op maandag 11-08-2008 om 23:46 uur [tijdzone +0100], schreef Calum
Benson:

> (As an aside, I'm slightly confused as to why you still have left and  
> right buttons either side of the thumbnail view, in addition to those  
> in the scrollbar?  That sends rather mixed messages to the user,  
> perhaps suggesting that they would do different things.,,)

Ah, of course. So that's the reason EOG actually disables these
scrollbar buttons!

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[Daniel G. Siegel]

thanks for the input!

we are staying now with the space and the appearing of the scrollbar if
more thumbnails are added.

of course you wont see double arrows, that was just in that screenshot
as i posted before.

thanks!

daniel

On Mon, 2008-08-11 at 23:46 +0100, Calum Benson wrote:

> On 11 Aug 2008, at 20:40, daniel g. siegel wrote:
> >
> > see screen1.jpg, there is much place left (where the red marked box  
> > is).
> > if there are enough items in it, scrolling gets activated and it looks
> > like screen2.jpg (please ignore the other red marks and duplicate
> > arrows).
> >
> > now, is it better to show the scrollbar always or to live with the
> > space?
>
> Well, those screenshots don't really offer a fair comparison, because  
> they doesn't show what the scrollbar would show if there was only  
> thumbnail :)  (From the behaviour of other apps, though, I'd assume it  
> shows the scrollbar shaft taking up the full width of the scrollbar...?)
>
> Personally I prefer to see the empty space than an "unscrollable"  
> scrollbar-- it gives you immediate feedback that you're seeing  
> everything that there is to see.  In an ideal world, perhaps the  
> visual appearance of a "full" scrollbar would be less intrusive than  
> it is today[1]-- maybe something to think about for gtk 3.0 :)
>
> (As an aside, I'm slightly confused as to why you still have left and  
> right buttons either side of the thumbnail view, in addition to those  
> in the scrollbar?  That sends rather mixed messages to the user,  
> perhaps suggesting that they would do different things.,,)
>
> Cheeri,
> Calum.
>
> [1] E.g. see attached screenshot from Apple Mail, albeit for a  
> vertical scrollbar--the trough is always shown, so you don't get  
> content jumping around as the bar appears/disappears, but the buttons  
> and shaft are gone so it has far less visual weight than a "full"  
> scrollbar.
>

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daniel g. siegel <dgsiegel@...>
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