First Pictures Of Single Window Gimp

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2009/10/first-pictures-of-single-window-gimp.html

by AjJi • 17 years ago

108 73 17 years ago

omgubuntu.co.uk

SwellJoe• 17 years ago

Isn't it interesting how the many-windows paradigm has come and gone? Desktop software for the first ~15 years of personal computing was full screen, single "window" for any given task. And then, for the past fifteen years or so, we've been dealing with the increased complexity of many-windowed interfaces. Seems strange that nobody noticed that some of the changes that windowing systems brought were negative until a whole new generation of developers came along and reinvented the single window model.

niels_olson• 17 years ago

I'm not so sure multi-windowing is quite dead when it comes to drawing and CAD programs. From a practical perspective, the paradigm of being able to move your palettes around, and pick which ones are displayed, is rather valuable regardless of how big your display is.

chancho• 17 years ago

But having to position them manually is just tedium. Let me choose which palettes to display and which side of the window to display them on, and then let the application take care of the rest. If I'm running at fullscreen then I don't want anything covering up the document/image/model. Otherwise, I only want to have to move/resize one window.

buugs• 17 years ago

I'm curious to what CAD programs you are using that are multi-windowing because the only one I can think of is ADAMS by MSC but that UI is a big pain in the ass.

Anon84• 17 years ago

Amazing? Hardly!

agnokapathetic• 17 years ago

"First Pictures Of Single Window Gimp - It Looks Vaguely like Photoshop."

FTFY.

anigbrowl• 17 years ago

Shoulda used a picture of all the dollar bills remaining after not buying Photoshop :) GIMP's pretty good for a free project, but using their own logo as the example picture makes it look like it's only good for editing sprites.

jcl4• 17 years ago

That's a clever idea for another reason, too: Photoshop will not allow certain operations on pictures of money, highlighting a disadvantage of closed-source software.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Bank_Counterfeit_Deterr...

nazgulnarsil• 17 years ago

I can't stand single windows for graphics stuff. ideal is to have the image take up one whole monitor and all the pallets and tools take up another.

alex_c• 17 years ago

That's why it's going to be optional. I, for one, can't stand multi-window interfaces (after almost a year of using a Mac, I still find parts of the interface annoying).

elblanco7• 17 years ago

The multi-window aspect of Macs makes them almost unusable IMHO.

I can't conceive of a particular reason to have some completely unrelated program showing up in the same visual space as the one I'm currently working with.

dpcan• 17 years ago

Wow, THANK YOU. I actually had no idea why multi-window interfaces in graphics programs even existed, but that's because I've been an unlucky single-monitor man forever!

Now I do NOT want the single-window interface, I want another video card and a second monitor.

I have a feeling I stand alone in the Geekiverse on this one.

imbaczek• 17 years ago

you want a _recent_ videcard, not an _another_ one. most, if not all, $100 gfx cards have two outputs, and the newest AMD offerings ($300 range) have - you might want to sit down - six.

blasdel4• 17 years ago

Except that GIMP's multi-window implementation is as shitty as possible, especially if you use focus-follows-mouse. The palettes all freak out and forget state in a most unusable way as you move the mouse over to them! It doesn't help that they're implemented as normal windows so they constantly get buried, lost, closed, and forgotten.

Besides, you really want to mouse across monitors to use the basic UI?

jpcx01• 17 years ago

This? http://bit.ly/1Yl9Su This looks amazing? Really?

It looks fine... but maybe the linux dudes have standards lowered a bit?

ars2• 17 years ago

No short urls here please - even for very long ones.

The url is:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_FJH0hYZmVtc/SsuTeVas_WI/AAAAAAAADl...

nailer• 17 years ago

Comment redacted, thought you were referring to the article itself, not your parent comment...

hughprime• 17 years ago

I assume "it looks AMAZING" is perfectly within the usual editorial standards of "omgbuntu", but wouldn't mind seeing a different headline here.

How about "it looks REASONABLY GOOD" or "it looks ABOUT LIKE YOU MIGHT EXPECT"?

jodrellblank• 17 years ago

How about "it looks like a mess" or "it looks like every shareware image editor since the days of Windows 95" or "it looks like you crammed as many controls as you could fit on screen using a cross-platform windowing toolkit"?

I can't say any of that, it's rude - but it's what I'm thinking.

Look at the right hand side - count the scrollbars, the dropdowns, the counters. What's that hideous layer control thing that's like a treeview/gridview with nested scrollbars sized to suggest it should be huge, crammed into a tiny little space? Grim.

NathanKP4• 17 years ago

Sadly this is perhaps a measure of how desperate us GIMP users are. I'm just happy that GIMP is all going to be in one window. Its amazing that they finally decided to leave the old standard interface.

But relief and anticipation aside I have to agree with you that as far as aesthetics and design it is rather mediocre.

kentosi2• 17 years ago

Sad but true...

I actually fought with the linux UI for ages to make it look visually appealing. Invariably I always ended up using MS Window fonts, and Mac-style UI.

If you look closely at the screenshot you'll notice that it'll only take a few minor adjustments to make it actually look appealing: - Appropriate fonts (rather than those overly rounded ones) - Slimming down of grotesquely large UI text boxes. - Slimming down of grotesquely large dropdown controls. - NOT using rounded corners everywhere.

You'd be amazed how radically the UI can be improved from just these minor changes.

Ironic that they chose this screenshot, given that GIMP is a project mainly concerned with graphics and visuals.

zokier3• 17 years ago

Looks like it uses native widgets and fonts, as it should (GTK stands for GIMP ToolKit after all). If it looks bad, GTK (or its theme) is to blame, not GIMP itself.

BUT I think you are correct, some UI elements, especially in the palettes are too large.

jan_g• 17 years ago

Granted, it won't win beauty pageant, but why do any of us use tools like gimp ? To get stuff done. Multiple windows were annoying (especially in combination with multiple desktops :-)), but other than that gimp qualifies as a good tool.

ars2• 17 years ago

You can almost do that now, by just arranging your pallets.

But I like the tabs for images though - that's a big plus.

elblanco7• 17 years ago

Wow. It's about time. Have no idea what the holdout was.

ori_b• 17 years ago

First thought: Well, that looks rather painful to use.

kierank• 17 years ago

Thanks for correcting that title.

NathanKP4• 17 years ago

Finally the day I have been waiting for! I can't stand the multiple windows, especially on the Mac OS X version in which one initial click is required to focus the window and a second to click a button or begin using a tool.

jpf• 17 years ago

There is a fix for the unnecessary double click issue:

http://darwingimp.sourceforge.net/guides/install_leopard/

(scroll to the bottom)

Flow• 17 years ago

And the menu is is the wrong place.

And Ctrl is used instead of Cmd.

It's a weird app for us on Mac.

Janzert• 17 years ago

The follow up also has a short how to on getting and building the new version http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2009/10/gimp-single-window-instal...

firefoxman1• 17 years ago

Cool, but doesn't GIMPShop already do this?

kentosi2• 17 years ago

The main purpose of GIMPShop was to adjust the GIMP hotkeys to work like Photoshop's. That's what it was when I used it years ago.

It's gotten a long way since, and yes it does allow you to work in a single window (MDI) mode - but only in Windows.

http://www.gimpshop.com/

imd• 17 years ago

I'm glad people are being so critical. Back when I started using The GIMP (v1.x), when people (including me) said Photoshop (v4) had a superior interface, people rushed to The GIMP's defense. The GIMP has gotten more Photoshop-like since then, and no one's complained, so apparently the defenders were blind apologists. Not everything should be like Photoshop, but I think doing it Photoshop's way would be better than this way.

jcl4• 17 years ago

From the minutes of a GIMP developer conference meeting not too long ago:

The user scenarios would be written down in advance. These scenarios should not be changed afterwards because it would lead to too much discussion. The goal is to cut down all this discussion. The product vision is to be used as a filter. For example: If someone comes with the request that the UI of GIMP should be like Photoshop, we can simply state: We are not trying to be like Photoshop, because we have a different product vision.

http://developer.gimp.org/gimpcon/2006/index.html

I think defining their software in terms of "not being Photoshop" hurts their software. Photoshop is free to add any features which they think will help users edit images, while the Gimp limits itself to the features that Photoshop has not already chosen.

antidaily• 17 years ago

"Bring out the gimp."

kirubakaran• 17 years ago

Looks like the Gimp is not sleeping.

yason• 17 years ago

I actually loved the floating windows: that's what window managers are for, right?

However, since transitioning to StumpWM the multi-window approach just doesn't cut it. Now it's a trade-off between logging in with Metacity and doing gimpwork, or keeping StumpWM running and avoiding gimpwork. If Gimp 2.8 has this, then I can start spending more time with that peculiar but beloved graphics suite again.

axod• 17 years ago

Wow that looks brilliantly usable. Why did they resist this for so long?

antirez2• 17 years ago

there is an hint for statups in this thing: to blindly copy from the "best on the market" is not a good idea.

jcl4• 17 years ago

I take it you don't like this new development? It is perhaps the most requested GIMP feature. Are you saying startups shouldn't listen to user feedback?

antirez2• 17 years ago

No I mean, when the first version if gimp was created to copy photoshop was not a good idea. And actually is not natural at all to split an application into multiple windows. To just do the obvious (single window) was a better alternative even when they started :) but sometimes it's hard to follow your own ideas if you see that the absolute leader (photoshop) is doing something different.

cookiecaper• 17 years ago

Well this is a bummer. I quite like having multiple windows. I hope they haven't completely gutted the multi-window layout.

jcl4• 17 years ago

From the blog post linked in the article:

The news also revealed an interesting but previously rather anonymous group of people: multi-window zealots despising the idea of a single-window mode in their beloved multi-window application. I suspect they don't realize that single-window mode is going to be optional...

tocomment• 17 years ago

I used Gimp a few weeks ago to resize a picture .. I'm still finding Gimp windows on screen ...

thanks folks, I'll be here all week!

zokier3• 17 years ago

Is there MS Windows build of 2.8 GIMP floating somewhere? I only found 2.7 which apparently doesn't have single windows goodness.

tybris• 17 years ago

Awful, why didn't they do that 10 years earlier? I thought I just didn't understand the power of having dozens of tiny windows. Now I feel scammed.

spot• 17 years ago

I don't care how many windows there are, I just want cut and paste to work in a reasonably intuitive way. In the GIMP it does not.

TrevorJ• 17 years ago

This looks good. It's worth noting that on the mac at least, even PS can have a windowless UI. It's actually nice when using multiple monitors and a tablet. A single window won't make full use of 2 screens of differing vertical resolutions.

First Pictures Of Single Window Gimp

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