Drawer HIG - please comment

[Marco Martin]

On Friday 22 June 2012, Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> Hi Marco,
> sorry for taking so long to reply. Here are my comments:
> 
> On 19.06.2012 17:06, Marco Martin wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > i did some work on that:
> > 
> > there are two prototype components in my new scratch repo:
> > scratch/mart/drawercomponents
> 
> Yay, components! :)
> 
> > one is called Drawer, and behaves like Okular Active
> > 
> > the other one is called ContextPanel and works like the file browser
> 
> Hmm... Was there a particular reason behind this naming? Imo the wording
> has to be consistent between the HIG and the accompanying components. I'm
> not strongly attached to the names I used in the HIG, but I'd like to use

was just to have two different names, i can rename the components 
OverlayDrawer and SplitDrawer, sure

> > usability wise i have some questions that are maybe worth being
> > discussed: * is there any use case where it should morph on the fly from
> > one type to another? (it would become a single component with 2 modes,
> > but code wise very complicated)
> 
> Erm, please never allow things like that. I have suggested in the HIG that
> it should be possible to adjust  the split drawer's (the one you call
> context panel) width if it makes sense, but it always has to stay the same
> kind of drawer. Otherwise it's totally confusing for the user.
> 
> > * they are now limited to be at the right side of the screen and only
> > one: it would be possible to support for a panel on each side or having
> > the side left or right configurable. again, the code would be a bit more
> > complex, so only if is worth the effort ;)
> 
> As I already replied to Felix Michel's suggestion in this thread: I'd like
> to reserve the left side for the Menu Flap, so Drawers should stay on the
> right.

ok those two make the code much simpler so, yay ;)

> > * how should behave when screen rotation will be supported?
> > i was thinking about keeping them fixed to the right side, and when the
> > screen is vertical making the flaps aligned to the bottom center of the
> > screen with vertical slide instead: just a possibility, still not
> > implemented
> 
> Hmm... that's a tricky one. From a screen space usage perspective, it would
> make sense to have them vertical in portrait mode (for the Overlay Drawer
> it doesn't matter since it's almost full screen anyway, but for the Split
> Drawer / Context Panel, it does make a difference). On the other hand, it
> may be confusing because other elements on the screen (like the top bar)
> rotate while the drawers move to another screen edge.
> How much work would it be to implement prototypes for both variants so we
> can test them with users? This is something I wouldn't like to decide
> without testing.

quite a bit, since would mean adapting the component to morph between those 2 
modes.

i can give a try tough.

another thig is that if the drawer area changes its geometry so much, it may 
require quite some adjustment on the application side as well to have contents 
that still fits

Cheers,
Marco Martin