UI improvements

UI Improvement Effort

Abstract

Inkscape provides the user with a graphically and feature rich environment for creating visual artwork. Why should we care about investing effort to UI improvement ? First of all, of course, because we like Inkscape and are passionate about the project, hence it deserves our attention and energy by definition.

But there are also a few more rational points to make, how the user could benefit from UI improvements.

In general, a user interface is crudely seperable into its visual and its interactive features. Most modern user interfaces are comprised of several ( mostly ) rectangular logical elements ( Widgets, Windows, Textboxes, ScrollBars, etc ... ). Those elements provide basic interactivity, while being stylable in size, color , texture and sometimes shape. This seperation of concerns at the level of development, endorses the idea of arguing about interactivity and visual style seperatly. As such, both groups deserve special attention and we will categorize our specific improvement propositions accordingly.

Note: Every improvement proposition on this page is required to be acompanied with a more or less elaborate, rational explanation.

Improvements

Visual Improvements

Simplify Icons + Theme

Proposal: Simlify both shape and color of current default icon set. Also, make Inkscape load a custom, default gtk theme. Make icons and theme s/w ( grayscale ) ,low in contrast with a neutral base ( meaning the base color is 50% gray ).

Explanation: Since Inkscape is a tool for creating rich visual content, its own visual appearance should not compete with that content. The users attention should be focused on his/hers own artwork, but the human eye is known to focus on high contrasts, both color and value contrasts. Therefore, by eliminating saturation and contrast from the UI, it is reasonable to assume, that a user can devote his attention more easily to the ask at hand. It is worth noting, that both these improvements are technically possible for each user to implement on his own by modifing certain files in his specific Inkscape installation. But, most users might not even be aware of such subtle and unconcious effects and more importantly, it is unreasonable to expect the user know about such technicalities. The users problem domain is visual content. Every problem he or she has to solve, that is not directly part of that domain is to be considered a waste of time. Therefore Inkscapes default state should be one, that intuitivly aids in that problem domain.

Here is a screenshot of how this could possible look like .

Maximize Working Area

Proposal:

Explanation:

Interactivity Improvements

Self-documenting UI