Gwenview II, the return

Yes, this is Clara wearing her christmas suit. Including pictures of her, is my very own Jedi trick to make people pleased with my mock-ups

About view mode buttons, it is a conscious decision. I think Martin explains clearly why it is done this way.

Actually, I thought of one more important reason to keep the view mode buttons in a prominent place.

Applications that can operate in more than one mode run the risk of being confusing: "Last time I used this image viewer, I believe there were little thumbnails under the picture. Where are they now?" Thanks to the big mode buttons in Gwenview, the risk of confusion is very much reduced. They serve the triple purpose of making obvious:

• the current state of the application
• the available states
• how to change to another state

The illustrative icons on the buttons are very useful for all three purposes.

Easy shifting between the view modes is what Gwenview is all about, IMHO. This is precisely what makes it the only image viewing application I need. First, I might want an overview. Then I want to see just one picture with minimal clutter. A little later I want an overview again.

Granted, this is just the personal opinion of an actual user and not a fancy "average usecase". But it makes me wonder just what the sample size is for that average. Sorry for the rant, but if you want to argue using scientific-sounding terms, at least do the empirical work first.

Thats a saying that a lot of professional Usability people have said over the years. And its true; developers use an application different from most users. Just because you are also a user doesn't mean everyone will want to use it like you do.

There is little empirical about either your post or mine. But my suggestion has the advantage that its based on observing multiple non-technical users. 3 of them in the last month. (yes, that excludes me and a friend who I place in the highly-technical category). They all had one major goal; to watch the pictures one by one, or as a slideshow.
The secondairy goal of browsing the files is fulfilled just fine for them by apps like konqueror or digicam.

Now, its not a problem at all that gwenview has the different viewmodes. Its wonderful in fact. But its not the major goal of most people that will use this application. So need to place it as the first buttons on the toolbar. I'd say there is no need to place it on the toolbar at all.
After all; the technical people will find such functions just fine if you place them in the view-menu. I'd even add the F2,F3,F4 keyboar shortcuts to them to make even more people happy. All people happy without showing the feature that many won't use in the toolbar. Remember; a toolbars sole purpose is to provide for often-used actions.

Remember; a toolbars sole purpose is to provide for often-used actions.
^^ Good point. Seems to me like the application should automate this by using a LRU scheme to decide which actions to display. There's a default setup in the beginning which is quickly modified as the app adjusts itself to the user's workflow. I guess you should be able to pin actions down to the toolbar as well just in case...

Sensible no?
Ben