Future UI Discussion

[Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen]

Saturday 13 December 2008 skrev Lee Olson:
> Attached is another mockup. Hopefully this resolves most of the issues. In
> case if it's not clear in the mockup, the "remove widgets" icon in the CV
> toolbar shows only on mouse-hover.

  Since i have a bit of time right now between writing reports and stuff for 
uni, i thought i'd add a few bits of commenting here :)

  The context view's toolbar, which leo gave some commenting on i believe, is 
where my vision is sort of different from yours a touch - primarily due to the 
mode-change i have in mind for it. Yes, i know, i said the m-word, but bear 
with me ;) i shall paste the conversation that i had with leo on channel on 
the topic here - it contains a pretty solid description of the vision:

<leinir>	Right, so we have two "modes" (yes, i said it ;) ) in the "task bar"
<leinir>	the first one, the normal one, has the applets listed, i.e. each 
taking up the same amount of space and with a text on them (click on them and 
the applet is scrolled into view), and a square button on the right with a 
spanner on it which switches "mode"
<lfranchi>	ok, whats the other mode?
<leinir>	the second one changes the "task bar" area to reorganizing in stead, 
which is a lot richer - when hovering over a taskbar item, a move overlay (in 
the style of the new panel in 4.2) appears, and a red X in the middle of the 
one side of the bar (reason for this momentarily). Click and drag to move the 
item, which consequently moves the applet order in the context view as well
<leinir>	The reason the red X (which is of course the remove applet button) 
shows up in that slightly odd position is that hovering near an edge of a 
taskbar item shows a green +, which when clicked will let you add an applet in 
that position
<lfranchi>	i dont have plasma on os x, so i have no idea what that whole 
second mode is like
<leinir>	Well, the second mode is fairly simple - the overlay is just a 
greyish overlay with a move icon in the middle :)
<lfranchi>	could you grab me a screenshot?
<leinir>	It makes it abundandly clear (as much as such things can) that you 
can move stuff around :)
<leinir>	Sure thing, though i think there's a video somewhere on one of the 
blogs when the feature was first implemented...
<lfranchi>	ok
<leinir>	http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrouuYxGu3E
<leinir>	That one doesn't show the grey overlay, and i'm wondering if that 
isn't actually a theme-specific thing... i'm getting it with Aya, but the 
default theme doesn't seem to have it
<leinir>	i would say that we should have it ;)
<lfranchi>	right, not sure where the grey overlay comes in
<lfranchi>	also what do y ou mean about the whole middle of one side of the 
bar thing
<leinir>	lfranchi: Split the taskbar item up in four like so:
[    |    |    |    ] - the move icon sits on the middle |, and the close icon 
sits on the right |, and if an applet has configuration, that would sit on the 
left | (for example Wikipedia might want to let you choose the locale to 
preffer...)
<lfranchi>	i see
<lfranchi>	good description :)
<leinir>	We could even argue that the + buttons should be visible at all 
times... so that we have the following sample taskbar (with [?] signifying a 
button with a wrench icon in it ;) )
<leinir>	[+][   ?   m   x   ][+][               ][+][               ][+][?]
<leinir>	where the user is currently hovering over the first item
<lfranchi>	all those add icons?
<lfranchi>	leinir: how do we arrange applets in the CV itself?
<lfranchi>	leinir: besides the toolbar thing
<leinir>	i'm not 100% sure about having them visible at all times, maybe just 
show them on hover, or at least very faded out. The reason for showing them, 
however, is that you have the option, and that it doesn't have to keep adding 
and removing those buttons from the layour, which would make the whole thing 
move around horrible when you move the mouse over the taskbar
<leinir>	lfranchi: That's the point, the applets are ordered as shown on the 
taskbar, and moving them around inside the viewport itself would be difficult 
to say the least with an infinitely long viewport (i'm sure you've tried 
moving stuff around in a very long list before, that's just not very 
confortable - and we've got the ability to remove that necesity) :)
<lfranchi>	leinir: i mean what kind of layout are we talking about? vertical 
layout? what if you ahve a really wide CV, and you want to have two columns? 
how about resizing of applets manually? do we allow that? (how)?
<leinir>	We could arguably vary the size of the applets on the taskbar to fit 
the size they have in the viewport, but i'm not sure that's entirely clever 
with the overlay system in place... it could never be less than the three 
icons size wide... unless, that is, we implement a toolbox type thing like 
applets on the desktop have that pop up above them on hover - it could work... 
:)
<leinir>	lfranchi: A horizontal layout, the same place the bar sits now :)
<lfranchi>	leinir: i mean for the applets themselves
<lfranchi>	leinir: forget the toolbar for a sec :)
<leinir>	Though i can see the point in essentially making the "taskbar" a 
scrollbar... :)
<leinir>	Hehe, right, sorry :)
<leinir>	No, i'm thinking infinitely tall, and always as wide as the viewport 
is wide :)
<lfranchi>	what if you have a wide screen monitor though
<lfranchi>	and how do you determine the size of applets? do you ask them the 
size they want to be? can you make them smaller?
<leinir>	we've got a lot of stuff to take up the width as it is :)
<lfranchi>	should they take up the whole CV?
<leinir>	Applets should be able to set a required vertical size (like a normal 
widget's minimum size, basically), meaning they could also potentially expand 
and contract as required...
<leinir>	As for setting a custom size for an applet, i really am not sure how 
to do that with this solution... maybe something so simple as a resize handle 
on the bottom of the applets that can have a custom size set would work for 
that
<lfranchi>	hmm
<lfranchi>	yeah
<lfranchi>	leinir: so this is how the task manager/panel thing works in kde 
4.2?
<leinir>	In part, i'm putting extra things on it - it only does the overlay-
to-show-you-can-move-things-around thing, i'm adding the extra icons for 
adding applets and suchlikes myself :)
<lfranchi>	ok
<lfranchi>	seeing how much we should take from plasma :)
<leinir>	*nods* looking for inspiration, really, other places where we're 
doing the same thing :)
<leinir>	Paradigms used around the KDE desktop that make sense for us :)

-- 
..Dan // Leinir..
http://leinir.dk/

                          Co-
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