Menu Flap

[Marco Martin]

On Sunday 03 June 2012, Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> Hi all,
> before I put it into an HIG, I wanted to discuss with you a certain UI
> element that Kontact Touch uses:
> The element I'm talking about is the "Menu Flap". The thing that most
> screens in Kontact Touch have on their left side. It works pretty much
> like the drawers we already use on the Activity Screen and in Files & Co.:

little historical note: i actualy taken the idea of the pullable flaps that 
are in the active workspace then gone in apps exactly from kontact mobile :p

> Pull it out from the side and it reveals several menu entries, optionally
> with sub menus. This is certainly not something every App should use,
> because it is merely a way of making a complex application manageable on a
> mobile/touch device. Apps that manage to actually reduce complexity to a

I think giving the possibility to apps to give some form of pullable menu in 
this way could make sense (even coming from an action collection defined in 
xmlgui)

but that said it should be pretty clear that is something that should be in 
general avoided, kinda a last resource for applications that really are more 
complex than the usual ones (and yes, i think there is place for slightly more 
complex apps in active, to make place to tess toy-ish even if less confortable 
use cases)
there could be a list of conditions to satisfy to say only then a menu like 
that becomes encouraged...
 
> Disclaimer: I don't think Kontact Touch is the perfect mobile PIM suite.
> Personally I wouldn't try to stuff all features of a desktop PIM suite (one
> which is among the most feature-rich ones I know) into a mobile version in
> the first place. But I know that the team behind Kontact Touch

I agree that kontact touch is not optimal.
also note that it has been written before everything else, so nothing was 
available yet: neither artwork, components, libraries etc (and considered that 
the result is quite remarkable, i have to say to the kontact devs ;), so it 
really evolved in its own way (it still even uses proxy widgets for the 
calendar, just transplanted from the desktop version, that is not really the 
best).
it would be quite awesome if there will be a bit more investment on kontact 
mobile in the future, to make it simpler and more integrated with the rest ;)


Cheers,
Marco Martin