One thing I'd like to see some usability testing is the GIMPs use of the toolbar for a global menu. I would expact users confused by the use of two menu sets in the interface - There is a FIle menu in the toolbar that makes it possible to open files, but not save them because it isn't related to a particular image window for example. This has following issuesI would like to start doing the tests as soon as possible, so if anybody has some more suggestions please let me know!
- Having two sets of menus is confusing and doesn't exist in any other application apart from sodipodi which copied this behaviour from GIMP (this needs empirical data from the user testing).
- The toolbar needs to be wide enough to hold the menu. Especially true for some languages.
- You cannot hide the toolbar. It will always eat screen estate even though the tools are accessible with other means.
There is a minor glitch to this. In OpenOffice the document window is enclosed in a placeholder window. When the user chooses to close the document and not quit, he can. When he chooses to open a new document, the old one, if it's untouched, closes so the new document gets placed where the old one was. If we choose not to use the placeholder window*, it may bring some problems:
- User launches GIMP, chooses not to start from scratch and chooses to close the image window. *plop* GIMP quits.
- User launches GIMP, chooses not to start from scratch and selects "FIle>Open" after locating the right document, the old document/image window closes and new one appears. It may not appear at the same location because it's the WM's job to decide.
- Open an image and save it under a different filename
cheers
* which may or may not be difficult, I don't know
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