I’ve just committed basic frame-handling functionality. Frame handling in UC is part of an advanced interaction design that eliminates the need for more windows.

The concept is that the application comprises only one window instead of multiple windows. Here is a small demonstration to show my point. Here’s the initial state of UC:

Let’s say the user wants to configure the listing of the right panel. Then (s)he presses the “Set Listing” toggle button on the right panel. Here’s what happens:

As you can see, a tab bar and the related tab appear on the left panel frame. They do not overlap like an additional window would.

It’s nice to see how friendly the Free Software Community is. When I requested a logo designer in the “help wanted” section of SourceForge, I got help from more people who were very kind and willing to cooperate. I’ve experienced the same attitude on the GTK IRC channels and mailing lists also.

I’ve written yet another PyGTK application recently for the university’s Digital Image Segmentation course.

Edge Detector Dude is a simple image manipulation application written in Python using PyGTK. It presents the Sobel edge-detected and gradient-directed versions of the input image. The pixels of the gradient-directed image are computed by denoting the angle of the gradient of the pixel and mapping this value as a grayscale color.

Edge Detector Dude is a front end for the accompanying gradient utility, which processes the input image and visualizes its result images. gradient is written in C using the Allegro game programming library.

I’m pleased with this GUI design because I think it’s very usable. However, several things could be improved:

• Add a “View” button to view images. Currently, the status bar mentions that images can be viewed by double-clicking on their names, but it’s not very eye-catching and can be missed.
• Add support for other file formats. Allegro only handles BMPs, but according to the documentation, it should handle various image formats.

I’ve written a GUI application for the university’s operational research course. It features an incremental UI, which the user can incrementally fill out as he/she gives more information during the input rather than having to handle tons of pop-ups throughout the process, resulting in a better user experience.

Operational Research Demo is written in Python using PyGTK, and you can download it.