Community
Participate
Working Groups
Created attachment 240673 [details] Screen Capture The logo banner in the about box is too short for the displayed content. See screen capture.
Well, you could just drag the box to be a little wider so the text would all "move up". (Just kidding :) I agree, something needs to be improved there ... now its just a question of the easiest way to do it.
Created attachment 241411 [details] comparison to Kepler about box Konstantin, just to be explicit, the size of the the about box in your screen shot wasn't default, right? You "dragged" a corner to make it larger? I ask because I see a similar problem with Kepler's about box, granted, not as large, but, still, the image doesn't "match" the length of text. In my case, I purposely dragged it vertically, until scroll bars disappeared, just to high light the issue. Part of my point is that "making the image longer" is, at best, a partial solution that still would not work for everyone ... I think the font used in there must depend on system font settings ... or something. I'm just making an observation ... and asking for clarification if what you see is somehow "default size" on your system? I think a "good" solution would not be simple and take some programming work. FYI, the background is also subject to "theming" so looks a little odd on dark theme ... will attach that next.
Created attachment 241412 [details] about box on dark theme, resized so no scroll bars Granted at this point in time, there are several issues with the "dark theme" and the about box, but I just wanted to point out the current design, of having specific regions reserved for "picture" and another region for "text" is also problematic for theming. Any UI experts know how to make the text area "wrap around" the picture, no matter it's size?
> Any UI experts know how to make the text area "wrap around" the picture, no > matter it's size? That would look bad. The typical solution for banners like these is to either: 1. Make the banner image sufficiently tall so that the end of it cannot be seen in normal resizing. 2. Make the banner image fade to a solid color and paint a panel of that color beneath it. But... The reason this jumped out is that in the Eclipse SDK, the image is not sufficiently tall for the presented content, so scroll bars are used. Then user either uses the scroll bars or resizes the dialog. We can minimize the problem by making sure that the supplied banner image is sufficiently large for the presented content.
Will still investigate for RC1, but ... I've played with "making a pretty image" enough to know I can't do it. But, guess I could look at making a "quick fix image" and see if anyone thinks it'd be better than what we have. Just to document it, I did find this comment interesting in about.ini (in org.eclipse.platform) interesting: "Maximum 15 lines and 75 characters per line." On my Linux system, the only text that appears visible, without resizing, is about 9 lines and 50 characters. (Not to mention, I purposely did not put in hard breaks, as IMHO, text should be allowed to flow, if a window can be resized. (perhaps in the past, it could not be resized, as it can be now?) The other bit of data, that may be a "harder" limit? is what's documented in Help and API Docs: "A full-sized product image (no larger than 500x330 pixels) is shown without the "aboutText" blurb. A half-sized product image (no larger than 250x330 pixels) is shown with the "aboutText" blurb beside it.". Our current image is 116x164 ... so should be able to double it's height without hitting the limit ... 116x328 ... with 2 pixels to spare :) (And, if I have not said it here, yet, have said elsewhere, I plan to provide a PNG image ... which should be "prettier" since the "plain image" can better gradually become transparent, while at same time "matching" what ever back ground color is used in a theme.)
Actually, as a perfect example of "being too close" to a problem, once I'd "given up" trying to fix in M7, I realized the about box image is just a modified version of the splash screen ... which is quite easy to "re-cut" into a size almost what we wanted 116x302 ... so I've put that change into tonight's final build for M7. Only problem is ... I do not have time to "test it" before hand ... but, will later tonight. I figure at worst, that means for RC1 it'll be more simple true "polish" and not a bit change ... and in the worse case, I'll ask for respin late tonight.
Created attachment 242586 [details] new "tall" eclipse.png I think the "tall" version looks pretty good ... if you could see it. I forgot to add eclipse_lg.png to the about.properties file, so it not exported with the plugin files. So, I've attached it here, in case anyone can/wants to review before a respin, just place this in unzipped bundle "org.eclipse.sdk_....". There are issues, though. On (my) Linux, it looks "just right" ... though the About Dialog box is now "square" and it's "min width" should increased from 400 to 600. (I'll attach patch). But, on Windows, with "scaling" set to the normal 100% it is almost too long, leaving almost too much space after the text. Not sure what's so different about my Linux set up ... I do have more "customization" but still using 10pt font, etc. I'll check Mac before concluding.
Created attachment 242587 [details] patch to increase horizonal "minimum width" from 400 to 600.
I've checked my Mac, and it too looks like the "long image" is too long. Quite ironic, or odd? that on my Linux machine the scroll bars still show, and not quite all the text, but on Windows and Mac there is "extra space" left over. Not sure we'll be able to get this right, without much more complicated "UI code" ... but ... I guess I'll "move forward" with the change, instead of reverting, since it will generate more feedback so we can properly fine tune for RC1. So to be specific, feedback will be needed: a. Is there too much, not enough "space" on YOUR machine/setup? b. Is the dialog box too square and should be more rectangular (keeping in mind, if we leave image the same, "more rectangular" will leave even more space -- which would be fine on my Linux machine :) and probably fine for Windows users who set "dpi" to be 125% instead of 100%. c. What to do with the image for "dark theme", if anything ... I'll have to experiment, but easiest thing would be to make whole thing just a little transparent, so it'd be a little darker with dark theme, and not "stand out" so much. Advice welcome.
For completeness, here's the commit that added the new image and changed plugin.xml to specify png file instead of gif file. http://git.eclipse.org/c/platform/eclipse.platform.git/commit/?id=f178dff514fd45d9398329f89653e02088044cbc And this is commit to fix the build.properties files. http://git.eclipse.org/c/platform/eclipse.platform.git/commit/?id=6cbf923f4daa66c5d16f55b9c5d177f74a3c179b
I'll mark for "RC1" since some follow-up work will be needed, to remove the no longer used eclipse_lg.gif files, if nothing else.
I've decided I won't have time/ability to improve this any more for Luna SR0, so think best to close as fixed ... since original problem report is fixed. But, opened bug 435327 for some possible future enhancements that could be made.
FWIW, I intentionally left the gif file "in place", just in case there is some off-beat OS that can't display PNG files, they'd at least have an easy work around, for some particular distribution. I'd say if we've heard of no complaint by Mars release, we could safely delete it.
