[TxMt] Color picker for CSS/HTML coding

Thomas Aylott - subtleGradient textmate at subtleGradient.com
Fri Dec 14 00:49:40 UTC 2007


On Dec 13, 2007, at 4:11 PM, Charilaos Skiadas wrote:

> On Dec 13, 2007, at 3:51 PM, Allan Odgaard wrote:
>
>> On 13 Dec 2007, at 16:23, Rob McBroom wrote:
>>
>>> On Dec 13, 2007, at 9:54 AM, Thomas Aylott - subtleGradient wrote:
>>>> Maybe "Insert Color with Color Picker…" ?
>>> I think just "Color Picker…" would give you a pretty good idea  
>>> what it does.
>>
>> Should we also change “Open…” into “File Requester…” or maybe “Open  
>> File with File Requester…” ;)
>>
> I can understand why you prefer the "Insert Color..." version, it is  
> more consistent with other such instances within TM, and it should  
> be clear enough to anyone, and matching TextMate's "task-oriented"  
> approach.
> That said, "color picker" is a common phrase describing exactly this  
> kind of construct, and thus closer, in my opinion, to what the user  
> would expect to find. I remember I was also looking for the words  
> "color picker" when needing such a command.
> By contract, the Open/Save menus are not really referred by anyone  
> as "File Requesters", at least not that I know of.
>
> So I would tend slightly towards the "Color Picker..." variant.
>
> On the other hand, if I were a user wanting to find how to work with  
> colors, I would type: cmd-ctrl-T, followed by "color". This would  
> lead me to the correct command in either case.
>
> Haris Skiadas
> Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
> Hanover College


I think this just gets into the basic discoverability of the app.
There's really no way to know what exactly will happen half the time.
People get used to bundle items simply inserting snippets of text, or  
displaying information. The concept that a command is going to open an  
actual color picker for them to choose a color isn't obvious.

I certainly don't have a solution to the problem. But I would like to  
see more UI based stuff in the future. With toolbars or palettes that  
are customized for the current scope.

I guess I could finally do that with TMTOOLS now. If only it didn't  
crash TextMate half the time ;)


—Thomas Aylott – subtleGradient—


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