Thoughts about statusbar

[David Edmundson]

2011/10/25 Aurélien Gâteau <aurelien.gateau at canonical.com>:
> Le 25/10/2011 11:32, Martin Gräßlin a écrit :
>>
>> On Tuesday 25 October 2011 15:37:20 David Edmundson wrote:
>>>
>>> On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 3:35 PM, Alex Fiestas<afiestas at kde.org>  wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Tuesday, October 25, 2011 11:57:33 AM Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> yes; as well as sometimes just saying "that information is not worth
>>>>> it".
>>>>> the kmail example is a great one. i do not care what column and line i
>>>>> am
>>>>> on and spell checking should be shown in the toolbar if at all.
>>>>
>>>> More conservative and globally-aplicable would be to add a toggle to
>>>> show/hide statusbar per app/window in the same way almost app do with
>>>> the
>>>> menubar. By default this option will be set as hidden but if some user
>>>> want to be able to see the column number, she/he will be able to set it
>>>> as shown again.
>>>
>>> Is plasma-devel really the right mailing list for something that
>>> affects every app, and nothing in plasma?
>>
>> which other list do you think is appropriate for Workspace related
>> discussions?
>
> What about kde-usability@?
>
>> And yes this is clearly Workspace and not application related. We as the
>> workspace define how an application has to look like and how it has to
>> behave.
>
> The statusbar is inside the application window, so I disagree this is a
> workspace issue.
>

KDE Usability is the mailing list I had in my mind when I wrote it. I
didn't mean do distract from the focus of a thread I think is quite
important.

Anyway, given I've decided I should pay more attention to plasma and
get away from just hacking constantly on one project, to make up for
it here is a breakdown of statusbars the most commonly used apps in
KDE. This was made with a fresh account with no settings altered.

General apps
---

Dolphin: Has a statusbar. Uses it for folder summaries, file
information when mouse is over an icon  as well as the icon size
slider.

Gwenview: No statusbar

KSnapshot: No statusbar

Kate: Has a "statusbar" but it's not on the bottom of the screen. Also
has an option to turn it on/off under settings.

Amarok: No statusbar

Dragon Player: Shows filename of currently playing item, as well as
elapsed/remaining time.
Time remaining/elapsed could be merged into the slider. Filename could
be shown in the window title.

Bangarang: Has all the media playing controls, and progress slider.
This makes full use of the space available, and there's nothing wrong
with it's usage.

Krita:
Shows all sorts of colour information as well as a few sliders.

Okular: No statusbar

KCalc: Shows if in normal mode Degrees or Radians etc.
Only uses a very small amount of the statusbar, but it is important information.

Ark: Shows tooltips as you mouseover icons in the toolbar, as well as
extraction progress
This first part of the behaviour is very inconsistent with every other
app, so should really be stopped.

Konsole: No statusbar


Pim
---

KOrganizer: Has a statusbar. Seemingly not used.
Get rid of it. If it's used for errors KMessageBox would be better

KMail: Says "Ready" most the time. Used to show the progress of tasks,
along with errors.

KMail edit view: shows spell checker state, plus row column info
(as already pointed out, this isn't useful information)

Akregator: Shows when fetching feeds. Also displays links in the web content.
Both these pieces of informaiton need to be displayed somewhere

KAddressbook: no statusbar


Network
---

Konversation:
 - Shows current channel (pointless, tab bar is visible)
 - number of people in the channel
 - server
 - lag

Anything in KDE Telepathy: No statusbars.


Games
---

KNetwalk: shows the number of moves, the time elapsed and the difficulty level.
This is essential information to the game, and needs to go somewhere.

(at this point I got too distracted playing knetwalk to continue analysing)


Summary:

Obviously this is only a small subset of the apps in core KDE (and
extragear) and an even smaller sample of all the applications built on
the KDE platform.

There is already a complete mix throughout applications so I'm not
sure a blanket statement of "most have an empty status bar" is an
entirely accurate portrayal. /Some/ have bad use of status bars, and
these need to be identified.

We definitely need a policy of "if you don't use it, don't show it",
in the HIG guidelines as most people are doing that anyway, and I
think that's the real cause of complaint. I don't think a global
disabling is worth talking about as some apps display essential
information here, and would be rendered "broken" without it.

I think the important thing to do is to make a list of the uses of the
status bar; displaying the URL of links, showing download progress,
showing errors, showing the filename etc. Then to analyse these on a
use by use basis (not an app by app basis) "where is the best place
this piece of information" (which could be nowhere, a KMessageBox,
tooltips, menus, or even remaining in the status bar). If an app then
ends up with nothing left in the status bar it's time to remove it.

For me the issue isn't so much wasted space as much as an
inconsistency in where the same piece information is displayed between
apps.

(sorry for the essay)