[kde-guidelines] Styleguide: Status bar

[Teo Mrnjavac]

On Wednesday, October 02, 2013 13:53:37 Heiko Tietze wrote:
> Am 02.10.2013 14:46:14, schrieb David Edmundson:
> > > * Provide a status bar in the main window of every standard application.
> > 
> > This goes against a massive discussion that was on Plasma once (that
> > never went anywhere)
> > 
> > Link to thread, and the most relevant reply on it.
> > http://osdir.com/ml/plasma-devel/2011-10/msg00297.html
> 
>  Thanks for the link, interesting reading.
> 
> I would conclude to define a standard, and not to hide or omit it. But
> whatever we decide, that's what the HIG is used for :-).
> 
> My two cents: A standard application concists of a main menu, tool bar, and
> status bar (and a navigation area and a content area). Moving any part off
> the main window (by default) is gnomish or apple'ish. The real KDE way
> would be to have an option to switch status bars on/off, in general. But if
> we allow users to get rid of the status bar we need to define an
> alternative way to present the information (which might be comprehensive).
> I don't think all programs should have special, fancy pop-ups in rekonq
> style for 'short term info', and I would call it an abuse to feed "long
> term stuff" into the title bar. I vote for keeping it.

I haven't been following the discussion on Plasma, but what should be "the real KDE 
way" is a matter of debate. The KDE way is what KDE wants it to be ;)

My reasoning is that in the days of 16:9 displays vertical space is precious. There are 
applications where having a status bar can objectively make sense, e.g. when there is 
constantly changing status info which would be too annoying to do with notifications 
or other elements (think KTorrent). On the other hand, my KMail spends 99% of its 
time with a status bar that just says "Ready", that's hardly efficient use of vertical 
space.
I also find it a bit outdated as a design, but that's quite subjective.

The guideline could simply say
* Provide a status bar in the main window of an application if the application needs to 
constantly show relevant and changing status information.

Cheers,
-- 
Teo Mrnjavac
http://teom.org | teo at kde.org
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