New designs for the add input source dialog
What the add input source dialog looks like today:
The whole thing feels a bit awkward. That's partly down to spacing - the window feels very small and the UI is cramped. It's also because the navigation model makes the dialog feel like hard work - you have to expand the list, then navigation forward, then potentially scroll down. It's a lot to take in. There's also very little sign-posting - it's not clear what will happen when you select a locale, nor which input sources are input methods.
The latest designs attempt to resolve these issues. There are no transitions between different views, and no explicit action required to browse the full list of locales:
The latest version of these mockups can be seen here.
A couple of notes about these designs:
- I really wanted to include a preview of the keyboard layout, but apparently this isn't easy to do. (I can't remember why.)
- The mockups just has a list of languages rather than of locales. I'm not entirely sure how practical this would be to implement, but it would make the list shorter and simpler.