Subject: [Gimp-gui] Toolbox Ellipsis

From: Andrew Pullins <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2015 19:49:55 -0400

Feature request <https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=756599>,
attachment 313343
<https://bugzilla.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=313343>

#User Story

As a user with a smaller screen having too many tools in your Toolbox
can sometimes force the Toolbox wegits and even tools off the screen.
This is very aggravating as this means the user has to make their
Toolbox bigger but this takes up room on the canvas space which is the
most important dialog.

#Details

In order to fit all your tools in your Toolbox you have to drag the
handle to enlarge it. But this takes up room on your canvas area so I
am in a constant state of resizing my Toolbox and dialogs. When you
have many tools in your Toolbox and you make your Toolbox smaller to
hold one or two columns of tools the Toolbox Widgets and sometimes
even tools move off screen.  This should not be the case.

As a solution I purpose that when there are too many tools to in the
space provided with the Toolbox Widgets that an ellipse menu appear.
This menu would hold all the over flow tools so that the user can
still access them no matter what the size of their tool box is. I
believe that this will greatly improve user experience.

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From: Alexandre Prokoudine <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 19:26:44 +0300

> believe that this will greatly improve user experience.

It's what Inkscape already does, and it works nicely. Makes sense to me :)

Alex

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From: Ofnuts <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 2015 14:59:48 +0200

On 15/10/15 01:49, Andrew Pullins wrote:
> Feature request <https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=756599>,attachment 313343 <https://bugzilla.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=313343>
>
> #User Story
>
> As a user with a smaller screen having too many tools in your Toolbox can sometimes force the Toolbox wegits and even tools off the screen. This is very aggravating as this means the user has to make their Toolbox bigger but this takes up room on the canvas space which is the most important dialog.
>
> #Details
>
> In order to fit all your tools in your Toolbox you have to drag the handle to enlarge it. But this takes up room on your canvas area so I am in a constant state of resizing my Toolbox and dialogs. When you have many tools in your Toolbox and you make your Toolbox smaller to hold one or two columns of tools the Toolbox Widgets and sometimes even tools move off screen.  This should not be the case.
>
> As a solution I purpose that when there are too many tools to in the space provided with the Toolbox Widgets that an ellipse menu appear. This menu would hold all the over flow tools so that the user can still access them no matter what the size of their tool box is. I believe that this will greatly improve user experience.
>

You can already make the Toolbox  display only the tools you use often, 
and use the Tools menu to access others. You can even go further and 
remove from the palette the tools you invoke using shortcuts...

---

From: Andrew Pullins <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 2015 13:03:15 -0400

> and use the Tools menu to access others. You can even go further and remove
> from the palette the tools you invoke using shortcuts...
>

Yes this is true you can do these things. But many users in general do not
even explore settings, and do not know you can add and remove tools you
want in the toolbox.  doing this is more of an advanced user thing as it
takes more exploration to then the average user is willing to do.

Going to the the tool menu to get tools you do not have in the toolbox,
while general users are more likely to do this, my mom still goes to the
edit menu to cut, copy, past even though I have showed here ctrl+x/c/v so
many times,  advaced users are more likely to skip this option as they (at
least I) pretty much assume the menu bar is for discovery and I know
everything that is in there or know the short cuts for them.

I rarely ever go to the tool menu.  My first inclination when looking for a
tool is that it should be in the toolbox. When I find that it is not I skip
the tool menu and go straight to preferences to add the tool I need back to
the toolbox.

shortcuts are also an advanced users tool and not many general users use
these. again my mom still goes to the edit menu to cut, copy, and past even
though I have showed her short cuts.  This also requires knowing the tools
short cuts or even more exploration.  I set my own short cuts but again I
am an advanced user.

This feature request gives an advanced user a better path when searching
for a tool if they don't know the short-cut for a tool, and it also raises
discoverability for general users as you can have all the tools in the
toolbox not hidden away and the toolbox wont be so large that it pushes
tools and toolbox widgets off the screen.