Getting newcomers on-board 2: make the View menu more understandable

[KLE-France]

After having talked about the initial encounter with XnView MP for newcomers, let's now address the View menu.

Indeed, when new to a program, one of the first things newcomers do is to try to set it to their liking. For XnView MP, the "looks" of the program pass largely through the View menu. But this latter is a disorganized mess currently, and extremely difficult to understand—even for me still, after years with XnView.

Let's put some order into this, but first a legend for what follows (the colors are there just to show function groups; they are not to be used in the actual menu:

Legend.jpg

So, the view menu serves three different functions. It can be used to open an image, to control what is happening with thumbnails while in the browser, and to organize what the program looks like.

So, what do you say we group those functions in clearly divided and named menu sections:

Proposed view tab.jpg

The above image is a simple schema for the menu on the first click of the View menu. So, all flyout submenus are closed in it. Most of these flyout submenus can stay as they currently are, with one exception discussed below. Also note that certain items are renamed and reorganized, again to make things clearer for everyone, but especially newcomers. Also discussed below.

Immediately, this layout of the menu will make the menu much easier to understand for newcomers (and everybody) because it clearly labels the three things that the user can do on it.

A few notes:

I would argue that the blue ("Image") part isn't really necessary, but if it is kept, it makes no sense to have just the Full screen button there. The user can view images in the view window and preview them as well. So, those tools should be there also. But, again, every single one of those actions can be done in other, much easier ways, so, do any of those really need to be on the View menu?

In the orange part ("Browser contents"), I would also question the presence of Rebuild thumbnails on this menu, wondering instead if it should be on the Metadata menu. Also, Refresh and Stop... do they still serve a purpose?

But hey, that's just me thinking out loud.

You're surely wondering where the Info Panels flyout is. Well, that function should not be independent of the other Panels. It makes no sense that users currently need to go in the Panels flyout to activate "Information", and then to the "Info panels" flyout to set it up (note too the confusing change in terminology).

So, instead, we put everything concerning panels into a single "Panels" submenu. Let's go ahead and open the Panels flyout submenu, and all of its sub-sub flyouts:

Panels flyout.jpg

This flyout submenu too is divided into sections and especially groups in their own sub-sub-flyouts: There are Sources panels (those that respond to the "Show Source Panels" button), Categorization panels, and, finally the Information panels (all those that can be attached to the currently-named "Show" button, that I propose to rename "Show Information Window").

This organization provide structure for the choices available to users, showing them all the panels in one place, and especially making clear what panels are part of a larger, collective function (sources, categorization, information).

Also, a few things concerning the order of the items in the green part ("Program appearance") are worth mentioning. On the currently deployed menu in XnView MP, for years now, I have always been confused by the order of the various choices. It is not until now, while putting together these mock-ups, that I realized that the current menu shows the choices... from top to bottom.

No. Of course the first thing to be listed in the Program appearance part has to be the layouts, but as to the various bars, there are three that are an innate part of any piece of software: the title bar, the status bar and the toolbar. Those need to be grouped together for their ubiquitousness in software.

Next there is the Filelist toolbar, which I am torn about. I put it here in the Program appearance group, but it could also be at home in the Browser contents group. Discuss, discuss.

In any case, I do think this idea of ensuring correct grouping for the functions available via the View menu is absolutely essential to ease a newcomer's way into the program.

As always, thank you for your consideration.

[bugreporter]

OMG, I think this would make things even way more complex and complicated, especially for newcomers. And is it even possible to group a menu this way, with headlines and indented child entries? I don't think so.

Secondly, this would destroy the consistency of menu structures.

BTW: What do you mean by "View tab"? There is no such thing, when I'm not mistaken.