[Solang-devel] New User Interface for Solang

[Florent Thévenet]

Hi Solang users,
I'd like to share an idea I had, to create a simpler, nicer UI for
Solang.
It's based on the idea that what you want from a photo manager is
viewing your photos and viewing information about theses photos.
To view your photos correctly you need : large space to display the
photos, easy way to go to The photo you want to view.
Then information like EXIF tags, histogram, geomarking... could be
displayed where it doesn't take too much space; as screens are
rectangular a sidebar is a good idea.

So here's the first mockup : http://feuloren.free.fr/01_tags.png
No more toolbar, it takes too much spaces on the screen and is not so
useful. I replaced it by a "magic bar" inspired by both apple iPad's
photo application and Solang's search basket.
When you launch Solang, there are some radio buttons to choose the way
you want to find your photos : 
*all photos ordered by date
*photos grouped by tags
*grouped by events, faces...

When you "open" (double-click on) a group, Solang displays the photos of
this group and the magic bar change to something like that:
http://feuloren.free.fr/02_tag_selected.png
The "Tags" button let you go back to the "main page", next button is the
tag you've just selected, then a "+" because the magic bar is exactly
like solang's search basket : you can add several filters to get
particular photos.

Filters have a contextual menu: http://feuloren.free.fr/03_tag_menu.png
When you save a set of filters a "Saved Searches" category is added to
the main page: http://feuloren.free.fr/04_searches.png

Finally the "enlarged-renderer" :
http://feuloren.free.fr/05_img_view.png
A button to go back to browser, previous/next buttons, a button to start
a slidehow, another one to go fullscreen (dunno if it's really
necessary).

Thanks for reading, tell me what you think about it, if it's a good idea
or if it's not what you need from Solang.

Cheers
-- 
Florent Thévenet <address@hidden>