Bug 370312 - New colors KCM needs far too many mouse clicks to save changes after changing a color
Summary: New colors KCM needs far too many mouse clicks to save changes after changing...
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: systemsettings
Classification: Applications
Component: kcm_colors (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Platform: Compiled Sources Linux
: NOR normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Matthew Woehlke
URL:
Keywords:
: 374139 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2016-10-08 19:29 UTC by Jonathan Marten
Modified: 2021-09-01 16:16 UTC (History)
7 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed In:
olivier: Usability+


Attachments

Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.
Description Jonathan Marten 2016-10-08 19:29:34 UTC
This KCM (in current plasma-desktop Git master, not sure if it has made it into an official release yet) has been recently redesigned to presumably reduce the complexity and the number of tabs.  This, though, has happened at the price of needing an excessive number of mouse clicks just to make a single colour change.

In the previous style of KCM (and in KDE4), starting from the KCM being open the sequence of mouse operations to change a single colour of the current scheme is:

1.  Select the Colours tab.
2.  Click the colour button for the item to change, the colour picker opens.
3.  Pick a colour by whatever means is wanted, then OK.
4.  Click Apply, the desktop colour scheme changes.

In the new KCM the sequence needed is:

1.  Assuming that the current colour scheme is selected in the list, click Edit Scheme.
2.  In the dialogue that appears, select the Colours tab.
3.  Click the colour button for the item to change, the colour picker opens.
4.  Pick a colour by whatever means is wanted, then OK.
5.  Click Save.
6.  Assuming that you don't want to change the name, click OK.
7.  Click Overwrite to confirm overwriting the existing scheme.
8.  Click Close.
9.  Select the scheme name in the list again (since there is now no selection).
10.  Click Apply; the desktop colour scheme changes.

This needs more than twice as many mouse clicks to perform the equivalent operation, making it more difficult to tweak those colours which are not shown in the preview (e.g. window title bar colours).


Reproducible: Always
Comment 1 Christoph Feck 2016-10-09 02:59:39 UTC
Agreed. During this redesign, the "Current" (unsaved) color scheme setting got lost.
Comment 2 Olivier Churlaud 2016-10-12 17:50:43 UTC
The "current" was to be removed. The VDG wanted to have a scheme creator and a scheme picker, which are 2 different usercases. 

They are now split. I add the VDG in the thread.
Comment 3 Thomas Pfeiffer 2016-10-17 20:33:22 UTC
As Olivier said, this change was made on purpose, to have a clearer separation between selecting and editing color schemes.
Yes, that makes this particular use-case less efficient. No, we won't change that fundamental system back.
Ideas for how to make the scheme editing simpler without sacrificing the clear separation between selecting and editing a theme (so no, no unsaved "current" theme) are still welcome, however.
Comment 4 Jonathan Marten 2016-10-18 11:05:44 UTC
Take the point about having a separation of the scheme editor, but the fundamental problem is still the number of clicks now required.  Unless, of course, the intention is to discourage users from changing individual colours and instead concentrate on predefined schemes only, but that would be a restriction of what was previously possible and there may well be adverse feedback from users.

The current setup could be kept but the number of clicks still reduced by the scheme editor dialoge knowing whether it is being called from System Settings or standalone (by a command line option if necessary), and in the former case having buttons "Upload", "OK" and "Cancel" instead of the current ones.  "OK" would save back the settings to the current scheme (the one that was selected in systemsettings when "Edit Scheme" was clicked) without any further interaction needed.  When started standalone the editor would have the buttons and operation as now.

Another click could be eliminated by the editor remembering the tab that was last used and selecting the same one when started again (currently the "Options" tab is always initially selected).

Also, the parent KCM could remember the selected scheme while the editor dialog was open and not clear the list selection after it is closed.

If all of these were implemented then the sequence to change a single colour would be reduced to:

1.  Assuming that the current colour scheme is selected in the list, click Edit Scheme.
1½.  In the dialogue that appears, select the Colours tab if necessary - only the first time
2.  Click the colour button for the item to change, the colour picker opens.
3.  Pick a colour by whatever means is wanted, then OK.
4.  Click OK to close the editor dialogue.
5.  Click Apply; the desktop colour scheme changes.

This reduces the number of clicks from ten down to five.
Comment 5 Olivier Churlaud 2016-10-18 11:39:35 UTC
@Jonathan: You have a point here. We are actually not done. The first step was to split the edition from the selection. Now the edition dialog should not look like this anymore, but more like a sdk tool where you can really choose everything on the main page, actually see the changes on the fly etc.

The buttons should disappear and have a tool bar + menu bar where you can have "save", "save as", ... 

This is still to be done: maybe we merged it too early, but I'm sure that otherwise, the work wouldn't have been merged anytime soon.

So yes: there is still work to do on this, and mockups or other ideas are welcome :)
Comment 6 Nate Graham 2020-01-15 18:33:34 UTC
*** Bug 374139 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 7 Nate Graham 2021-09-01 16:09:01 UTC
With the latest QML version of the KCM, a few of the steps have been cut out, which mostly leaves us with Bug 411317 and the fact that there's no "Save" button, just "Save As". Let;s use this bug report to track that specifically.
Comment 8 Nate Graham 2021-09-01 16:16:13 UTC
Actually, my mistake: there's now an "Apply" button which does that. Even fewer clicks! I think we can call this fixed.