[Sugar-devel] seeking feedback on sketch of a new color selector

[Gary C Martin]

Hi Walter,

On 11 Nov 2009, at 15:48, Walter Bender wrote:

> I made a patch to the color selector on the About Me panel to make it
> a little easier to navigate the color selections. Please see my screen
> cast at http://dailymotion.virgilio.it/video/xb42um_color-selector_tech 
> .

I needed to watch through a number of times before I could work out  
the logic for the colours of the two smaller buddy icons. First couple  
of times through I thought one was a swapped fill/stroke, and the  
other was a 'light' version, then third time through I decided they  
must all just be random, finally I twigged that it was a scrolling  
history moving from right to left (small <-- big <-- small).

Quick thoughts:

- What you have now would be visually understandable after a single  
click if you added a brief transition animation so that the icons  
scroll left/right and resize (like a carousel).

- Not convinced you need the undo icon if you can add the transition  
animation, it feels slightly odd at the moment that the undo is right  
next to the yet too be seen new colour combination (perhaps it could  
go above or below the centre icon if it really needs to stay in the  
design).

- The alternative is to have N small buddy icons around the central  
large icon, where the small icons are a close variation of the central  
large icon colours. Clicking the centre icon picks a completely new  
random base set of colours; clicking any small icon moves it to the  
centre large position, and generates a new set of small variants. The  
colour variants could just be +/- small random steps from the main  
base colours, or have some spacial meaning (left/right could be +/-  
fill colour, up/down could be +/- stroke colour).

Regards,
--Gary