GIMP UI Redesign

October 09, 2007

I’ve always been a great fan of Fireworks because of its simplicity. Adobe Photoshop is a lot more powerful, but it is a bit less intuitive. I’ve also tried GIMP, but I have given up just for the interface I just don’t like. It remembers me of the old Photoshop style with a lot of windows. It is just not easy for me to work with it, and I’m glad GIMP team noticed this and they are brainstorming for the new UI.

In my opinion they should implement the MX style, one window with all the stuff. Canvas in the middle and optional toolbars on the side. As a webdesigner, I want to take full advantage of my screen-resolution, so if possible, I’d like the toolbars to auto-hide so I can see my project in 1:1 zoom. For old-school GIMP users, making the toolbox to float around too would be a nice thing.

Another good thing that I would be nice to see is a nice integration with webdesigning tools like bluefish, ajunta, eclipse, etc

Well this are just my basic ideas, and probably I will send an email to gimp.brainstorm at gmail.com with “GIMP” as subject and an imaging showing my ideal graphic tool. If you do have nice thoughts on this, feel free to contribute too. Good ideas will be posted on the brainstorming blog. Opensource UI design :)

Tagged with: en, opensource, ui, design
This post has 8 comments. Feel free to read them and leave your own.

Sérgio Carvalho
They shouldn't implement the MX style. MDI does not cope at all, or copes very poorly, with multihead setups. In general, applications should not be handling window management. That is a task for ... window managers!

People complaining about gimp's multi window interface usually lack a decent window manager. More often than not, they live in MS windows, using prehistoric window managers.

If you use devilspie or KDE, I'll be happy to send behaviour scripts that produce an MX-like interface in multi-window apps like gimp.

Gustavo Felisberto
Talking of UI. The person that told YOU that Serifed fonts in a screen is a good idea is wrong.

About the GIMP redesign, Sérgio said it all. Window Managers manage windows, not applications. But I guess the "everything inside the box" is one of the paradigms of UI that is going to take time to die.

lmjabreu
linux zealots FTW :D

"Talking of UI. The person that told YOU that Serifed fonts in a screen is a good idea is wrong."

They're actually ok if you use line height correctly.

About GIMP, that thing is a major pain and productivity stopper, I won't develop this subject tho.

The new GUI should be CS3 based, that's a really awesome GUI.

Alcides Fonseca
Sérgio: I just love MDI in both Windows and Mac. In Linux I like for example tabs, like firefox or Gedit, isn't that MDI too? Well I believe at some point there should be window managment in applications, depending on the purpose.

I believe GIMP should have it because I may want to look diferently in my workspace depending on which task I am doing, and it might have other integration (like configuration) in the app. That's my point only.

Gustavo, I've read this among other:
http://tinyurl.com/n8mmt

I've read that sans-serif are better for main texts, but I've read the other way around. I like Georgia a lot, but as you are not the first one to ask that, I might change it ;) (What I don't do for my (not) faithful readers!)


Gustavo Felisberto
The definition of a Faithful Reader is simply one that reads in a regular basis :P

For as long as I can remember Serifed fonts in a screen actually HURT my eyes. Not in a philosofical way. They actually hurt. And I'm not the only one complaining of this.

Paula
Serif fonts are best for printed documents and sans-serif for web. Of course that I am talking of a big text. You can use serif fonts in titles of your site and that will be ok.
Of course you can use line height to minimize the problem of serif fonts in a website, hm... see? to minimize the problem... :-)


Sérgio Carvalho
Tabs aren't the kind of MDI I was talking about, and it is not the kind of interface you defend for Gimp. In this context, it is a strawman, so I won't develop it further.

Your comment failed to explain why should an app pick up window management. An app picking up window management sounds to me like an abstraction leak. Any abstraction leak must be VERY well justified.

Alcides
The reason I have to ask it is the integration with designing-specific features GIMP should also provide.

If I am working on a website, I might want the windows to look someway that they give me the website layout, for example. Or if I'm doing some print design for this tshirt, I may want to have displayed somehow that the image I am working on shows on different tshirts models I have...

I like the way it works on MX and CS3. And I'm not the only one to think that way sine Adobe changed from "Floating windows" like GIMP to a more MX MDI style.

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I used to write in this blog, but I've found a better format to express myself. From now on, you may read my writings on ideas, programming and politics on my new wiki.

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Nov 24, 1988 40.197958, -8.408312

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