You are using tabs for two items: 'language' and 'layout', yet, there's that huge area on the top with one navigation item that goes back to 'All Settings'. Why not a toggle button group for those two on the same area as the navigation, centered?
Jan: the "all settings" is the control-center shell's toolbar, we don't control that.
Anonymous: Blogger seems to be crapping it up. Updated with bigger pictures. The artifacts are my graphics driver's fault.
29 January 2011 at 01:37
Alan knowles said...
It would be better to list the language name in both the currently selected locale, as well as it's localized name,
Eg. Im fixing a pc which has Chinese as the current locale, i can not read any of the settings , so changing to English is difficult
29 January 2011 at 03:56
Anonymous said...
Slightly off-topic, but it'd be nice to see something like the iPhone's on-screen virtual keyboard, maybe making use of gnome-shell's facilities:
- It'd be useful if there's no keyboard plugged in (tablet), or if the keyboard isn't paired yet (bluetooth keyboard, gdm login screen or even cryptoroot password input). The virtual keyboard would be optional/on-demand if there's a physical keyboard.
- If there's a text input field, the keyboard appears, while making sure the focused input field doesn't get covered.
- language and dictionaries can be switched on the virtual keyboard, and layouts (qwerty, azerty, kana) would reflect the chosen language.
- it'd be nice if text input with mixed languages/dictionaries would be possible. I don't think it's uncommon for people to write a text in multiple languages. Either that or make it really easy to change language/dictionary while typing.
- Even if there is a keyboard plugged in, it'd be good to be able call up the keyboard to see the layout always reflecting the effect of the modifier keys (alt, ctrl, dead keys, shortcuts or layout in general)
In fact, I only have two gripes with keyboard handling in GNOME:
* separate layout for each window by default (at least in some installations, I’m not really sure it’s the GNOME default);
* options are global instead of local to the layout.
The second one is annoying if you frequently switch from Italy to Colemak (which I do on my laptop), because for Colemak you want to have Caps Lock as an additional Backspace and Right Alt as Compose key, but you don’t want the same for the Italian layout…
What does "Layout" mean? Does it mean "Keyboard Layout"? If so, shouldn't the text be changed to this?
29 January 2011 at 09:42
Anonymous said...
Wow, you had me for a second. I thought, “hang on, keyboard layout settings that don’t even mention the word ‘keyboard’ anywhere?” But then I thought, “Wait, no, it’s Hadess, he’s just pranking us”. ;-)
29 January 2011 at 18:20
Anonymous said...
Hmm, the word "keyboard" doesn't even appear once on that screenshot!
31 January 2011 at 00:30
Anonymous said...
Jan: the "all settings" is the control-center shell's toolbar, we don't control that.
Maybe, but perhaps something it can be communicated back to the control center people that it's an awful piece of design. Nearly 50 vertical pixels wasted on a tiny piece of text, when we have other designers desperately trying for compact layouts that will fit on a small screen.
8 February 2011 at 20:15
Comment deleted
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
26 January 2012 at 09:23
Yesterday, I finished working on a UI cleanup for the “Region and Language” panel in the control-center. You can see the results below. I'm pretty happy with this, though quite a bit of work could still be done, like allowing users to install “language packs” (fonts, translations, dictionaries) from the language tab, or integrating input sources in the layouts tab. [Image]The layout before the separator are used by other users on the system [Image]My favourite layouts, with the new contextual items(and sans keyboard model selection)
"Region panel"
11 Comments -
You are using tabs for two items: 'language' and 'layout', yet, there's that huge area on the top with one navigation item that goes back to 'All Settings'. Why not a toggle button group for those two on the same area as the navigation, centered?
28 January 2011 at 21:40
Can we have bigger screenshots?
28 January 2011 at 22:39
Jan: the "all settings" is the control-center shell's toolbar, we don't control that.
Anonymous: Blogger seems to be crapping it up. Updated with bigger pictures. The artifacts are my graphics driver's fault.
29 January 2011 at 01:37
It would be better to list the language name in both the currently selected locale, as well as it's localized name,
Eg. Im fixing a pc which has Chinese as the current locale, i can not read any of the settings , so changing to English is difficult
29 January 2011 at 03:56
Slightly off-topic, but it'd be nice to see something like the iPhone's on-screen virtual keyboard, maybe making use of gnome-shell's facilities:
- It'd be useful if there's no keyboard plugged in (tablet), or if the keyboard isn't paired yet (bluetooth keyboard, gdm login screen or even cryptoroot password input). The virtual keyboard would be optional/on-demand if there's a physical keyboard.
- If there's a text input field, the keyboard appears, while making sure the focused input field doesn't get covered.
- language and dictionaries can be switched on the virtual keyboard, and layouts (qwerty, azerty, kana) would reflect the chosen language.
- it'd be nice if text input with mixed languages/dictionaries would be possible. I don't think it's uncommon for people to write a text in multiple languages. Either that or make it really easy to change language/dictionary while typing.
- Even if there is a keyboard plugged in, it'd be good to be able call up the keyboard to see the layout always reflecting the effect of the modifier keys (alt, ctrl, dead keys, shortcuts or layout in general)
29 January 2011 at 06:18
Looks great!
In fact, I only have two gripes with keyboard handling in GNOME:
* separate layout for each window by default (at least in some installations, I’m not really sure it’s the GNOME default);
* options are global instead of local to the layout.
The second one is annoying if you frequently switch from Italy to Colemak (which I do on my laptop), because for Colemak you want to have Caps Lock as an additional Backspace and Right Alt as Compose key, but you don’t want the same for the Italian layout…
29 January 2011 at 09:23
What does "Layout" mean? Does it mean "Keyboard Layout"? If so, shouldn't the text be changed to this?
29 January 2011 at 09:42
Wow, you had me for a second. I thought, “hang on, keyboard layout settings that don’t even mention the word ‘keyboard’ anywhere?” But then I thought, “Wait, no, it’s Hadess, he’s just pranking us”. ;-)
29 January 2011 at 18:20
Hmm, the word "keyboard" doesn't even appear once on that screenshot!
31 January 2011 at 00:30
Jan: the "all settings" is the control-center shell's toolbar, we don't control that.
Maybe, but perhaps something it can be communicated back to the control center people that it's an awful piece of design. Nearly 50 vertical pixels wasted on a tiny piece of text, when we have other designers desperately trying for compact layouts that will fit on a small screen.
8 February 2011 at 20:15
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
26 January 2012 at 09:23