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aonez / Keka

The macOS & iOS file archiver
https://www.keka.io
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Change the dock icon (color & label?) to the currently selected compression method #187

Open hipunk opened 6 years ago

hipunk commented 6 years ago

Hi,

I read that a relatively big GUI update is in the making, and the best you could do to really improve things would be the following idea: Make the dock icon change color (looks, like in terms of a label) to the currently selected compression method.

  1. That would be a unique feature, something unheard of in the compression utility world of macOS.
  2. It would help to know what Keka will do on drag'n'drop whilst it is hidden/buried in the background.
  3. It could also indicate progression whilst in the background.

Do you know Adium? In Adium you can change the color of the duck in the preferences and when a message arrives, the duck even moves! In the case of Keka, a movement (e.g. the Keka bug spinning ;) Maybe a bit overkill, I know, but the ideas flow right now) could indicate work in progress (for instance compression in progress or decompression in progress).

In my opinion, that would really help this app make a huge leap forward when it comes to usability. Now, I always double check if I really selected the correct compression method. That step could be cut out by a glance at the dock icon if it would indicate what Keka will do by color or a meaningful label.

If you wish, I could make a quick mockup at the weekend showcasing how I imagine it, if that is needed.

Greetz

gingerbeardman commented 6 years ago

I like this idea

MaxPower85 commented 6 years ago

Keep in mind that Keka is adding performance improvements to compress/decompress faster (to use compression/decompression utilities which are better optimized for multithreading)... and as more and more users keep getting newer Macs with better performance, for an average user, compressing/decompressing some average archive (some archive that has maybe a few hundred MB or less) probably wouldn't take so long for him to consider opening some other app to do something else while Keka finishes what it is doing and to just periodically check the progress bar from time to time.

If compression/decompression time is measured in seconds, I'm not sure how useful would a progress bar in the dock be in those cases.

And for cases if someone compresses/decompresses lots and lots of data very often, he would probably also be working with multiple archives at the same time... and the dock icon isn't large enough to show lots of progress bars... and even if it showed time for all progress bars combined, it would probably have to show how many files are there in queue too.

Changing the icon color wouldn't clearly tell an average user much about the current format unless the text about it was shown too... and showing that and a progress bar and how many files are there in queue could cover more than half of the icon in the dock, even if the font wasn't very big... and keep in mind that many users like to keep all apps they use relatively often in the dock, so someone may have 30 or 40 or even more icons in the dock, so icons may not be very large, especially on laptops.

Icon animation (like a spinning icon) during compression would probably be considered way too distracting by many users... many would probably dislike if some app was trying to constantly get their attention, to look at it, if some task was taking several minutes or longer... many probably don't even like to see an icon jumping when some app finishes all it had to do, if the app doesn't have some really important notification (like some important reminder or a notification that someone is trying to message them or something like that).

So if something was added that many users could find distracting, it should only be an optional feature... so some users wouldn't write negative reviews if they don't like something that was added, but they can't turn it off.

aonez commented 6 years ago

In the past I've tested a percentage in the Dock: https://twitter.com/kekaosx/status/184950127167942656

Really nothing bad about that enhancement, simply never finished that work. Might get to it again.

About the color, I might think about that. Seems like a pretty good idea, just I'm not sure about the performance issues and the difficulty in changing the icon to other colours, still being a well designed icon. In the animation I'm with @MaxPower85, too much distraction.

I loved Adium (used in black or green), sad to se it fading in the current era. Even did a quick menu bar icon extra for it.