Lainaus Alex Launi <[email protected]>: > On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 9:01 AM, Otto Kekäläinen <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Well, for advanced uses like you and me F-Spot is fine, but for normal home >> users it is too complicated. > > > Could you provide some evidence for this? F-spot's UI needs some serious
We'll, I've migrated hundreds of Windows users into Ubuntu (I work for a Linux support company) and nine out of then users run into trouble when using Nautilus they try to open and/or manipulate images. On a fresh Ubuntu install I always install Gthumb and make it the default image viewer in Nautilus file associations. That fixes all the usability problems I've witnessed. I also work as a usability export in software development projects, and it's my professional opinion that Gthumb would be better than EOG. If you want to do usability testing yourself, try out this scenario: 1. prepare a folder with a lot of photos 2. ask the user to open that folder and do some tasks. for example: remove duplicate photos, rotate some image, crop/resize another etc. 3. copy that folder to a CD or USB and give it to you Step 2 is where users run into problems. At first when they doubleclick the image, the only function they can do is to rotate. After this users do various things, but most commonly they click the image with the secondary mouse button and select "open with". First they try F-spot which also only allows rotating (in single image viewing mode). Secondly they open Gimp and then they scream, that Linux is too complicated. If Gthumb is installed, steps 2 and 3 generate only minor problems and most users succeed with the task (based on what I've seen in real life situations). Or try this: as a user to import a file from their camera/phone to the computer, then resize it to fit under on megabyte and then mail it to you. With Gthumb's ability to manipulate images in place this is easy but with EOG or F-Spot users will not make it at all. Asking somebody to use Gimp for this simple task is overkill. > love, but the developers are working hard. Rather than have TWO photo > managers, one of which isn't such a great photo manager, it makes more sense Yep, we really don't need to photo _managers_. Howerver we need one proper photo viewer and at the moment, Gthumb is the only one with all the most commonly needed features. > to file bugs on f-spot, and *make it *less complicated. Maybe you could > point out some specific areas where you feel it's lacking for users. I > wouldn't call myself an advanced photo user at all, I just use it for minor > tagging, slide shows, and exporting to facebook/flickr. If I'd file a bug, that the file hierarchy should be changed so, that imported folder remain and single folders, do you think they would do the change? Touching the filesystem is a major change in architecture and that is not something they'll do (I presume). However it could be worth to file a bug that the single image viewer mode should have more features, like cropping and resizing. > Also it has one huge drawback: it saves all the pictures in a folder >> structure based on months and dates. This makes it really hard to browse a >> F-Spot archive from the filesystem or from any other image viewer. > > > I agree. This is really annoying. Jep, this is the biggest drawback and I don't think they'll change this, because the whole idea with F-Spot is to forget the old file hierarchy and move on to tagging based work model. >> I know tagging is the superior way to file and sort your images, but the >> case for normal home (and business) users is that they still like to think >> about their image collections as folders. > > I'm pretty sure this isn't true. Folders confuse the hell out of everyone. > They only think about them this way because it's all they've ever had. This > is bigger than f-spot however and needs dealt with at the file system/file > browser level. Sure folders confuse, but since users anyway browse their files in Nautilus in the first place, jumping to F-Spot to manipulate an image in a folder really messes up the users head. >> F-Spot sucks at browsing images in folders and to get all the benefits of >> F-Spot you need to import the images first into the collection. That is an >> extra step.. > > Not really, it's probably fewer steps because you don't need to navigate > folders once you've imported whereas with a folder based one you're going in > and out of directories. Yes, but if you have images somewhere else, like on a CD, on a network drive, on your phones memory card, on a USB stick etc and you start out in Nautilus, doing an import to F-Spot is an extra step. >>> Anyway at current Ubuntu defaults, the Eye of Gnome opens all jpg-images, >> and that is not good. Gthumb would be much better. Neither the the EOG nor >> F-Spot (in single image viewing mode) allows for any other functions than >> rotation. Cropping, resizing etc is missing - but can can be found in >> Gthumb. That is features you can actually find even in the default Windows >> Vista file browser, so I think this should really get some attention. > > > Let's file some f-spot bug reports :) This shouldn't be difficult to > implement as the infrastructure already exists, it's just a UI change. Make > some mockups, file some bugs, and reap the benefits. In the end, we'll all > be better off. I still think that the easiest solution would be to dump EOG in favor for Gthumb. That's what I've done with all my clients for years and for them it works very well. They still can use F-Spot if they whish to. -- Otto Kekäläinen www.sange.fi -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
