A Russian Krita user approached us today with the suggestion that our toolbar and layerbox organization could need a bit of a refresh... And that might well be true, but we shouldn't move from one layout to another layout blindly.

So... Please use this thread to give your input. What in the current layout works and doesn't work for you, which functions you use a lot, and which you don't ever use.

Let's take the current look and see what might be improved:



There are two toolbars: the file toolbar (new, open, save) and the brushes and stuff toolbar. That contains some groups that I think belong together logically:

* gradient, pattern, color
* paintop editor, paintop selector dropdown
* blending mode, erase toggle, global alpha lock toggle
* two sliders, for size, flow and opacity
* mirror horizontal, mirror vertical
* add to palette button (this should go away and be a menu in the settings menu, I think)
* workspace selector (should go all the way to the right)

In the layerbox, we've got the the layer display, with the thumbnail, name and on the next line, the toggle buttons. We can do stuff there as well -- it's easy enough to add a new view mode for the layers.

Now we're talking about the layerbox... I really would love to have new icons for the buttons at the bottom! The current icons are gaudy and mismatched. Please?

Oh -- here's the original post: http://vk.com/ilovefreeart?w=wall-38024296_892%2Fall, and this is the image: http://cs316325.vk.me/v316325535/9882/KmvisySfQlM.jpg .
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Ok I have something similar but not really. Its about the tools on the left. Most of us only use half of them often, the rest are more or less wasted space and without them the entire toolbox could be slimmed down BUT you still want to have them... just in case.

What if you could have like the Layers/Brushes dialogue - two boxes in the same are with a switch or folder tabs to define which of the two you're looking at and if you want to change toolbox add to that a choice of what tool goes in the A one and what tools go into B and you could have one with just the ones you often use, and then a second with the ones used more seldom.

Do the buttons need to be SVG or what format would you prefer? And B/W/G right?
Plus one layer
open dropdown menu arrow
Duplicate
Up
Down
Into Folder Group
Out of Folder Group
Layer Properties
Delete Layer

And in sort of Oxygen style or should we strike out for something new?

Oh and wouldn't the color dialogue (background foreground color) work better in some coexistence with the color picker on the right? Just keep all colors in the same place?

yes, we could probably try to split the toolbox into two or three toolboxes -- then you could tab them together. But since the toolbox usually is very narrow, tabs would be difficult to visualize, I think. We could also try to make the dividers for the groups into something that you can collapse. Making the the whole toolbox configurable is, I am afraid, a major undertaking. It would have been easier if we'd simply kept it as a toolbar object, since those _are_ configurable, but then it would have been impossible to have columns

As for the icons -- grayscale, in a style to fit with the toolbox icons. SVG should be the base format, but we'd need hand-optimized PNG files in several sizes to to actually load.

The icons we need are new layer, duplicate, up, down, out of group, into group, properties, delete layer.

The dropdown arrow is drawn by the widget theme, so we cannot change those.

For bonus points, the icon to the right of the blending mode combobox, that allows to select different ways of visualize the layer, that icon might need a refresh, too

jensreuterberg wrote:Oh and wouldn't the color dialogue (background foreground color) work better in some coexistence with the color picker on the right? Just keep all colors in the same place?

I was wondering whether we couldn't just put that button on the advanced color selector, maybe in the top-right.

Yeah just squeeze it in there! I mean 9 times out of 10 you stick to the colour your using (since the last colour is saved in the "krita-right-click-circle" anyway) and having everything color related in one place seems the most logical to me.

I'll sketch up some icons tonight... talking about the toolbox icons - there are two color ones and the rest is B/W, should those be remade too (just edit out the colours?).

Having those monochrome would be very nice!

Just quick mockup of what I think could be improved - more readable, and space saving things:

About the toolbar: I don't think it needs massive changes. The proposal would just break up the groups we have currently without making it more logical. Beside that the toolbar is already completely configurable and it possible to move the button in any order.

I agree that the "add to palette button" should be removed and the workspace moved to the left.

@JoseConseco: That doesn't work because the right side of the items already uses a progress bar for filter etc.

The only gripe I have with the toolbar is that the buttons are so large: I have a 1280x800 laptop, and I always have to remove some buttons from the toolbar.
Other than that, I propose a tiny little border is placed around the layer-thumbnail: A white layer is invisible on the lighter themes and that confused me tons when I started out using Krita.

Well I know this was about top bar but I did some mockup that I think fixes, simplifies most of things.
http://i39.tinypic.com/2nkow29.jpg
And comparing to current one.
http://i43.tinypic.com/2v19c83.jpg
Most important stuff:
- moving paint dynamics to top bar as subcategory of paint tool;
- reduce double titles on right dockers
- outline to layer miniature as suggested by TheraHedwig
- grouping left panel with separators,
- no status bar - takes lot of space, and I never really use it anyway. Some of its functions moved to top right.
- hidden some configuration icons - imo seldom used - and should be accesible from Krita preferences.

This is just wild sketching on my part just to get to grips to it. Lets just say that the ones that are in my opinion even ok are the bottom one which is kinda just tiiiiiny tiiiiny.

The upper left are kinda ment as copies of the toolbox icons but they are all kinda "samey" the beveled ones are really off and not good for anything - but included for the fact that "duplicated layer" symbol looked a bit like a butt - I'm tired enough for that to be hilarious right now.

Like I said the lower ones are the once I kinda see as ok-ish

One drawback when drawing icons here are the themes. The icons should match the colors being used, otherwise you'll open Krita with the dark theme, everything looks consistent, then you decide you want a light theme, and suddenly everything looks wrong and stupid.

It would be nice - though a hard decision - to use only a limited set of themes and have an icon theme for each (light/dark equivalents).

That's the idea I have for the interface, anyway. Let's discuss.

Thats the upside with the simple ones... (who where the fourth "simple ones" I did the rest had too blocky arrows, too thin etc) the colours can be changed constantly (in retrospect I realize I should have ignored even posting the beveled ones but... they look like a butt and it was around two in the morning, I cant be expected not to post that then).

The thing was that you could always fiddle with bevels but "black bordering white or grey" was the best resemblance... gonna try to do some more today (no butts today) who are more like the already existant ones in the toolbox