Activity Screen : Resize and Dragging

[Marco Martin]

On Monday 18 July 2011, Fania Jöck wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I actually prepared some layouts for resizing and dragging of Boxes
> during our last workshop here in Darmstadt and forgot to share them.
> 
> DRAGGING BOXES
> So for dragging the Box I suggest do use a color highlight, that
> actually show, where the box can be released, see scribble:
> http://share.basyskom.com/contour/UIDesign/Contour_DragBox.jpg
> Currently that feature uses a light transparent white area that is not
> well seen. I would suggest in using a real highlight color, that would
> be used consistently for:
> - highlighting of resources (for example while the context menu is opened)
> - highlighting of areas (like here for dragging boxes)
> - highlight of icons (like the recommendation overlay when there are
> new, unread recommendations)
> - highlight of selected items (for example in the add resource dialog)

just for reference, the current look is:
http://wstaw.org/m/2011/07/18/plasma-desktoplC2158.jpg

that is a white rectangle (not even svg at the moment, would probably need to 
be one if the look has to be 100% like the mockup)

as for highlight color, the plasma theme does provide one (light blue), it is 
usually not used (both default plasma theme and the default widget style use 
colors very very rarely) for several reasons:

* those are things that usually have to work on (any) wallpaper, any color 
different from white-ish gray can have very bad results (least likely go be 
too much out of tune, or hated is blue, that's why the color of kde has been 
blue since almost forever)

* those themes have been designed since the beginning to be pretty subtle and 
not in the face, it's true that from one side they lose in contrast and kinda 
of "immediate" feeling, but feel more elegant and less tiring in the long term

then, would be ok to color the svg of the highlighted item (is a single svg 
file used in both the current icon and the current menu item)
i just feel it could have bad repercussions, and as said, if that should be 
done, the least dangerous color is blue (not that i like that color that much, 
but seems the statistically "less hated")


> 
> RESIZING BOXES
> For resizing of boxes, I think the user needs a little hint, that this
> feature is possible. Currently no test user got that feature, if he
> didnt watch it before. Normally the edges get just a small icon, that
> indicates the "grip", see scribble for two possible icons:
> http://share.basyskom.com/contour/UIDesign/Contour_ResizeBox.jpg. For me
> the first row with the little dots is a better symbol; the arrows
> indicate more an enlargement in 2 directions, but our feature currently
> supports only extension in a horizontal direction.

i would put 3 little embossed dots, and yeah, there will always be features 
that can be discovered only after somebody shown them, like a video (for 
instance pinch zoom is not "natural" at all, it became so only after all the 
advertising done by apple ;)

also, is true that right now only horizontal direction is supported (and we 
agreed to keep it simple that way) but if plasmoids will be supported, they 
would have necessarily to be resizable in both, since they usually have a 
pretty big minimum vertical size

Cheers,
Marco Martin