Templates on welcome page #10020
Templates on welcome page #10020
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For the majority of users who don't have an extra wide screen, how does the welcome page looks like? That seems to be a bit problematic. One possibility: transform the Recent projects area into a tab bar, and have two tabs (recent projects and project templates). You could style the font size on those tabs to be bigger to also act as large headers. |
| void QgisApp::createPreviewImage( const QString &path ) | ||
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| // Render the map canvas | ||
| QSize previewSize( 250, 177 ); // h = w / std::sqrt(2) |
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Consider hi-dpi previews too?
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Would you save two pictures?
The current one is rendered in "current screen scaling", directly taken from the map canvas (and therefore superfast), so possibilities are a bit constrained.
| void QgsTemplateProjectsModel::scanDirectory( const QString &path ) | ||
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| QDir dir = QDir( path ); | ||
| const QFileInfoList files = dir.entryInfoList( QStringList() << QStringLiteral( "*.qgs" ) << QStringLiteral( "*.qgz" ) ); |
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Is this case insensitive by default?
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I guess. NoFiter is specified by default and QDir::CaseSensitive is listed in filters.
src/app/qgstemplateprojectsmodel.cpp
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| previewPainter.setRenderHint( QPainter::Antialiasing, true ); | ||
| previewPainter.setPen( Qt::NoPen ); | ||
| previewPainter.setBrush( Qt::black ); | ||
| previewPainter.drawRoundedRect( 0, 0, previewImage.width(), previewImage.height(), 8, 8 ); |
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Hi dpi compatibility?
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Compatible with the recent projects and with the image size. Unless something is changed #10020 (comment) here and aligned in recent projects, I wouldn't touch that.
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| QFileInfo fileInfo( index.data( QgsRecentProjectItemsModel::NativePathRole ).toString() ); | ||
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| QMenu *menu = new QMenu(); |
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Shouldn't
QGIS/src/app/qgswelcomepage.cpp
Line 218 in 9ff1156
I guess it's better to delete it when it's hidden then keeping it around for the whole lifetime of the app
I am testing this on a 14" notebook. But with hidpi. |
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@m-kuhn , the proposal linked dramatically changes the way projects (recent or template) are laid out (i.e., text below project screenshot results in much narrower width). I'd say this PR needs to implement either possibilities here, namely revamping project items to look like the mockup, or having header tabs. I have no strong opinion on which approach is better :) |
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@nirvn better like this?
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To be honest, I preferred the "all in one screen" approach to the (more hidden) tab approach. What if we just reduce the size of entries in both lists so they fit nicely in one page? We've plenty of room, they should be able to fit :) |
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( keeping in mind that one of the big motivations behind showing templates on the front page was to be able to provide an osm template, so that totally new users had an immediate visual queue how to create and start with a map with some content) |
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Just a quick question, for the average user, how prevalent should templates be? How much will they be used in reality? Should the average user deal with them? I'm not sure how much of a pain to implement this would be but could users have some options to do with dual or tabs? I'm sure some users will never use them or seldom while others might integrate them in their workflow, and for these two cases, the prevalence of the templates in the welcome page should be dictated by those two factors and by their personal preference. Just my two cents, I hope this helps. |
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Oh and also, from a graphical point of view, would it be better to have the preview as is or have the preview fill the the whole rectacle (the preview would only be a fragment of the canvas ) and have the text on top of it with some settings to ensure that everything is always readable. I feel that using the preview the preview as a small square separate from the text create a lot of deadspace, and I think this is more apparent with the side by side layout. I am aware that this is not the place to discuss such things but I just wanted to plant a seed. |
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@nyalldawson, "we have plenty of room", speaking for yourself! 😉 this is how this dual column looks like on my screen: My problem with this two column design is that IMHO it's already too narrow, but let's say we think it's not, it'd still be "the end" of that design as nothing else could be added. The tabs approach adds more flexibility (read a third tab with a QGIS latest news feed). Also, if we go ahead with tabs, we should hide tabs that have no content (i.e. with I have zero templates on my machine, hide; if I have zero recent projects, please hide! etc. 😄 ). If we opt for that approach, IMHO QGIS should ship with a few templates, and upon first launch of QGIS the user would only see the templates tab, with the nice screenshots of OSM basemaps et cie. I also think it'd be good UX to remember which tab the user last focused. If someone prefers to see recent projects upon launch, he/she will be shown that -- if someone prefers templates, having focused that last would return to templates. Big +1 for tabs from me. |
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My original message was suggesting that we reduce the size of entries to make everything fit, that's what I was meaning by saying we had room (as in, the items are already quite large and heavily padded). But, shouldn't we ideally hide all the panels here anyway? I agree that with them open the view is cluttered, but I don't think they SHOULD be opened until either a project is opened, the "new project" button is clicked, or a layer added. Again, for a first time user, the difference in "wow what the heck ARE all these buttons and stuff" factor would be huge if we hide away the default layer tree/browser arrangement. I really am not a fan of the tabs. The other consideration is which we must include is that in 3.10 we'll be adding the news feed to the welcome screen too. This HAS to be on the first screen, and cannot be hidden away in a tab. So these same questions will just come right back at us 😉 |
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What do you think about adding a permanent entry to the list for "new blank project"? |
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@m-kuhn |
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For the sake of emptying the bag and pick the best option here, let me continue arguing for tabs (while acknowledging you make some valid points 😉 ). The one positive of placing the news feed into its own tab would be to only load the news feed upon focusing on the tab. That has a few good side effects: a/ we could have a more dense news feed (for e.g., not only showing QGIS blog posts, but also a few of the latest QGIS flickr maps, possibly a list of ongoing crowdfunding efforts, etc.; essentially it'd be a QGIS community hub of some sort), and b/ if we have the recent project / template / news feed into a single panel, we'd probably end up inciting more users to disable the news feed entirely as it'd also load upon launch. |
+1 to hide the template path. |
Checkout the corresponding QEP regarding the news feed - we're going for a highly moderated/curated feed, with time limited articles, and with the future option even of geo-fencing news items (so you wont have to see announcements of conferences on the other side of the world). It's all been designed to avoid saturating users, ...but... we really need this content to be in their faces, or the whole exercise becomes meaningless. Motivated users already have channels for seeing QGIS map showcases and other similar content, but what we NEED from this is a way to force push content into the eyes of the 99% of QGIS users who aren't actively seeking out this content. |
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Regarding the mock up (specifically the above-referred proposal to modify the recent project/template item design, I'm not 100% sure how we'd go at it in the context of a non-fixed width for those lists. If we adopt the mock up design (project screenshot on top, info at the bottom), it might look weird if the columns are very wide (look at Mathias' screenshot on top for e.g., and imagine that design). If we keep the current approach but reduce the text size and padding (and the screenshot a bit?), it'd probably be a more flexible design. Is ultimately the idea for the welcome page to take over all of the main window or we'd still keep panels and toolbars? |
I think panels should be hidden, see: |
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@nyalldawson , got it. |
That will depend a lot on the user, but they should at least help as a "starting aid" for first-timers.
-1 for an option. We shouldn't cover bad UX decisions with more options which are bad UX themselves.
+1, have been thinking about that too
Paths: not really required, agreed. And for hiding the panels, let me see how easy/doable this is on a technical level... |
If you actually mean parse the XML, I'm -1 (it's too fragile). If you mean open the project as a project, it's mostly an issue about loading layers. I think we could do with a "don't resolve layers" flag in QgsProject to allow for this use case.
There's currently the ctrl+tab shortcut which toggles panels -- maybe you can hook into the same approach this uses? |
I'm also +1 to this -1 😉 as much as we clearly have some diverging opinions on the best approach (columns vs tabs), let's just settle on what most feel being the right approach, and code the very best experience out of it. |
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Hi, Not hiding the browser panel would potentially have some value for the user, as the browser allows to open projects from the file structure. But if such logic is too complicated I would just hide all panels by default and use the whole width available in the window for the start-screen. Just my two cents, |
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I think hiding the panels should be doable. My main considerations for the layout:
I wonder if colors for the columns would help (or some other visual cue that the items serve a different purpose) |
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Well the news-feed column is a must and is more important to us then the template column. If it comes to deciding what columns to show. In the QGIS PSC meeting people had mixed feeling about the project templates. Some think they are useful and important, some not and wouldn't use them. But the main reason that QGIS.ORG is funding this initiative is to get the news feed together with crowd-funding campaigns out to our users. We think that many of our users don't visit the usual communication channels (Website, blogs, social media) but may see QGIS news and crowd funding campaigns if they appear on the start screen. |
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Trying not to diverge too much from the PR's goal here, I have to re-iterate the importance of a news feed column implementation that'll allow for it to be disabled altogether. It seems this PR shows there are more people supportive of columns, let's settle on that. In the welcome page column implementation, IMHO the best approach is to allow users to show/hide each column (in addition to intelligently hiding a given column that has no content). So instead of having a "show welcome page" option in the settings, it'd become: welcome page content: [x] recent [x] template [x] news. |
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By default, all three columns are active. If someone doesn't care about template, he/she can disable that. If someone doesn't care about news (or lives in an environment where bad actors are profiling online users for malicious reasons and thus doesn't want to be identified as a qgis user), he/she can disable that. Etc. |
Co-Authored-By: Nyall Dawson <nyall.dawson@gmail.com>
Co-Authored-By: Nyall Dawson <nyall.dawson@gmail.com>
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The QGIS project highly values your contribution and would love to see this work merged! Unfortunately this PR has not had any activity in the last 14 days and is being automatically marked as "stale". If you think this pull request should be merged, please check
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Dear @stale bot, I'd like to keep this open if it's ok for you. I'm basicaly waiting for the winter to be over and everything melting again before merging this. Meanwhile if you could add the merge after thaw label instead of the stale label, I'd be more than happy. Thank you for your collaboration, |
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Here, have the coveted "merge after thaw" label 🍺 |
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@m-kuhn seems welcome page with templates and recent projects now always shown on QGIS startup, even if in settings I choose to open new project on start. This is pretty confusing. |
Shows the available templates on the home screen.
Templates can be shipped through the current user profile path or an AppData path with the suffix
project_templates(That needs docs for sysadmins ;) ).If the template is in qgz format, the embedded preview.png will be shown as a thumbnail for additional user happiness.
Since there is now a preview image inside the zip, this could also be used on modern operating systems to be extracted and shown in the file explorer thumbnail (not part of this PR ;) ).
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