Hi, let me comment on some sections of the useability report (a very nice document, btw.)... > 2. Zooming > 2.1 Issue: Handling of the Zoom-Function > Both, the menu 'View Zoom' and the keyboard shortcuts are intuitive > and easy to use. Yeah, you tested this on german keyboards where Ctrl-+ does work without an additional modifier ;) > One testperson tried to use the mouse wheel and expected to zoom in > and out by that means. You can zoom in/out using a wheel mouse by pressing a modifier (Ctrl if I remember correctly). > As this did not work, he used the zoom function in the toolbox. He > tried the keyboard shortcut CTRL which worked fine, and stated that > there used to be a problem with this in the GIMP 1.2. Only, it did > not become clear what 'Threshold' meant in that context.? > > Suggestions: > > 1. Provide a short tooltip text to explain the 'Threshold' option. > 2. Provide a context sensitive help (F1) to explain the function of > the 'Threshold' option in that context. IMHO the threshold option should be completely removed. It can be made an option in the Preferences instead (if that's needed at all). > One user (Photoshop expert) had severe problems to make a free > selection as the fixed ratio option was still enabled from the last > session (as all settings, the selection modes are saved after a > session). We should probably disable auto-saving of the tool options. It seems to be more confusing than useful. > Provide the opportunity to manipulate the size of a selection: When > the mouse pointer reaches the edges of a selection, the user can > increase and decrease the size by simply dragging the edge. Provide > visual feedback next to the mouse pointer (corresponding to the > 'crop' tool). In case of elliptic selection, the size is changed at > the edges of the reference rectangle. This is non-trivial because the selection is actually a grayscale mask. If we wanted to solve this generally, we'd have to transform the grayscale mask that represents the selection. This would lead to ugly artefacts at the corner of the selection. I see no simple solution for this problem but to add vector-based selections. > Another issue is that the user-defined aspect ratio is overwritten > by the size of the recent selection as soon as the 'fixed aspect > ratio' mode is left. As the two Photoshop users often changed the > modes while they explored the GIMP's functionality, they were really > annoyed by that behaviour. Other than the mode itself, this option > is not an operation mode, but a user-defined setting. Therefore, it > should be saved. Yes, we should probably change that. While it is convenient to see the size of the selection being displayed in the tool options this info is also available in the statusbar. So it would probably be better to leave the entries untouched. > When the anchor is shown next to the mouse pointer, it must always > be possible to anchor the selection. I haven't been able to reproduce that problem. Of course the cursor feedback needs to match what happens. Can you give details on how to reproduce this brokeness? > The GIMP 1.2 user missed the former dialog which showed the colour > channels and provided a slider to set the threshold of the > selection. The dialog provided some kind of preview of the actual > selection, as in a complex image, it is quite hard to determine > which parts are selected and which are not. This dialog is still available but it isn't any longer bound to the "By Color Select" Tool. Choose "Selection Editor" from the Dialogs menu. > Move the 'Fill' and 'Stroke' functions to the 'Selection' menu. I don't think these belong there since they do not manipulate the Selection. Where do other apps put "Fill"? IMHO it belongs into the "Edit" menu and I am surprised that the users didn't look for it there. So much for my comments. Thanks for the usability testing. As soon as we have collected more feedback here, someone could sit down and put the results into Bugzilla enhancement requests. I think we should then be able to improve usability in GIMP 2.2 based on these reports. Sven
