[kde-guidelines] Styleguide: Tabs

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Thursday 10 October 2013 19:48:31 Heiko Tietze wrote:
> On Thursday 10 October 2013, 13:25:26 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> > On 09.10.2013 21:03, Heiko Tietze wrote:
> > > On Wednesday 09 October 2013, 19:55:02 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> > >> On Wednesday 09 October 2013 09:18:42 Heiko Tietze wrote:
> > >>> I tried to include the common KDE pages, most probbly implemented per
> > >>> listview. Horizontal tabs are that what you might expect with a tab
> > >>> control. But paged dialogs handle the content similar to vertical
> > >>> tabs.
> > >>> What do you think?
> > >>> ...
> > >> 
> > >> Perfect, nothing to comment from my side :)
> > > 
> > > What's about my question? And do I read the other posting right to
> > > remove
> > > the advice on accelerator key?
> > 
> > Ah yes, sorry, I forgot about the question. And now that I re-read it, I
> > must admit I don't really understand it. Could you clarify what exactly
> > the alternatives are between which we should decide? Thanks!
> > 
> > Ah and now that I've read "vertical tabs" again, I think we should inlcude
> > "Do not use rotated horizontal tabs. Tabs are stacked either
> > horizontally or vertically, but the label is always written horizontally".
> > I'm not aware of any KDE application which currently still use rotated
> > tabs, but since Amarok had them at one point and we don't want to see
> > them again, I guess it makes sense to explicitly discourage using them.
> 
> "Rotated" tabs are vertical tabs [1] (at least in other programming
> languages). Actually, I did add an advice to refrain from using it, as you
> suggest. But I double checked the MS guidelines [2] and they show a picture
> with something we always use: a list (or some kind of detached vertical
> tabs) of items on the left hand. And in terms grouping it doesn't matter
> how you achieve pages, as for instance discussed in "dialogs", isn't it?
> I introduced the idea of "static conent" in contrast to dynamic documents or
> the like. The idea of " Use vertical tabs for less than five options with
> static content. Prefer vertical tabs for configuration content." was advice
> for settings dialogs. But I myself wouldn't look for this stuff at the
> tabs-page.
> 
> Perhaps we should write:
> * Do not use vertical tabs (or any other tabPosition except North).
> * If you want to show a few pages with static content, like configuration,
> use a [[list view]] with icons and hide the tabs.
> 
> Makes sense to me :-).
> 
> [1] https://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/qtabwidget.html#tabPosition-prop
> [2] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa511493.aspx

Ah okay, now I see that I confused vertical tabs with the Tool Box widget [3]. 
I guess we need an HIG for that one as well.
Calligra managed to get vertically stacked tabs with horizontally written 
labels for their tool options docker, though (see Calligra Words, for 
example). I think they work way better than tabs with vertical labels because 
you can read them comfortably. Maybe we should encourage them instead?

[3] https://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/qtoolbox.html