[kde-guidelines] Styleguide: Status bar

[Heiko Tietze]

On Thursday 03 October 2013 16:46:49 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> On Thursday 03 October 2013 11:51:45 Teo Mrnjavac wrote:
> > The KDE way is what KDE wants it to be ;)
Exactly! 

> > 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.
That would be a compromise but I believe a bad one because it give too much 
leeway to the devs.

> I agree with Teo here: I don't think a status bar should be a must-have
> component of every standard GUI. If it contains useful information, it's
> worth the space it occupies, but if it has no real use, it wastes vertical
> space and, frankly, an empty gray bar also looks rather ugly.
My pro status bar arguments are:

1. It shows useful information, both static or long-term and variable short-
term. It makes sense to know all is going right even with a simple 'Ready' 
status at kmail.

2. We do not have a good replacement if we neglect status bars at all. Even if 
kmail would still be accessible without the 'Ready' information, it would lack 
of the progress bar on slow communications.

3. A status bar frames the application. It denotes it as primary window and 
has a white-space function (I decline the rare vertical space argument).

4. Whether or not a status bar is used, along with the main menu bar and the 
tool bar, brands an applicaiton for an OS. Rekonq, for instance, looks like an 
alien to me.

IMHO the last point is the most imortant.