Paper Cut: Image Dimensions
Tonight I read an article on Canonical’s launch of a usability improvement project, called One Hundred Paper Cuts, which aims to work out minor nagging issues that make users’ lifes harder. I, for one, would like to mention one such issue (though it’s true it’s really a Gnome issue but, still…)
It bothers me that there’s no easy/direct way of knowing the dimensions of an image file from Ubuntu’s file browser, Nautilus. One has to open the properties dialog and select the Image tab (that’s 3 mouse clicks). Other than that, one has to open the file in order to get the info from Eye of Gnome’s status bar or another image viewer/editor.
This is an old pet-peeve of mine, which I have hoped might be addressed with each new Ubuntu release. I remember the first time I noticed that there was an Information view on the side pane of Nautilus and went ‘That must be it!’, only to realize there was no really important information there (the folder’s object count is already available on the status bar; ok, the folder’s modification date is there on the info pane as well).
It would be nice and productive if you could get such relevant information about image files as their dimensions in an easier way. Let’s see:
- they might be shown on the status bar, along with the file size info; you’d simply select a file and get the info (incidentally, that’s what you get in the OS-that-must-not-be-named);
- they might be displayed as a tooltip; hover the pointer over the image and there you have it;
- they might populate the Information pane, giving it a proper raison d’être; or, at the very least
- they might be directly accessible from an option on the images’ context popup menu.
Well, these are just some suggestions. I’ll be looking forward to seeing this and every other usability improvement that results from the Paper Cuts project.