[Patch] System Settings : Improve General/Advanced tabs visibility

[David Jarvie]

On Thursday 27 March 2008 1:25, Nicolas Ternisien wrote:
> Your mail was really interested Torsten, and I would like to specify the
> reason why I submit the first patch for System Settings : This is only
> because, in any other places in KDE, tabs which display many important
> information (not 2 or 3 useless options) are never as small as the System
> Settings tabs were.
>
> And I'm not only talking about the Advanced tab, but also about the
> General
> tab, which was not really easy to see too.
>
> Here is a new proposal, which follow the mockup of Michael, that I like
> too.
> I've also _artificially_ increase the button size by adding the Settings
> word for each text, which makes them more important. The other advantage
> of
> this displaying is that even if the user is in a KCM module, it can still
> see where he is, and directly switch between modules.
>
> The font size and icons are not anymore problematic because font size is
> standard, and all toolbar actions use icons.
>
> http://stuff.forum-software.org/kde/systemsettings-after3.png
> http://stuff.forum-software.org/kde/systemsettings-after4.png

I'm quite sceptical about using buttons to select option groups. If the
buttons are contained in a toolbar along with other buttons, it won't
necessarily be obvious at first sight firstly that there is a way to
select a different group of options, and secondly that the General and
Advanced buttons are mutually exclusive and are the only buttons available
to select different groups of options. Tabs are the standard user
interface device for such things, and retaining tabs will make it much
clearer to the user how to use the display and what the possibilities are.

-- 
David Jarvie.
KAlarm author & maintainer.
http://www.astrojar.org.uk/kalarm