[DISCUSS] K HIG Toolbars

[seele at obso1337.org]

> Have a look at some graphics apps like e.g. kolorpaint. They usually use
> vertical toolbars a lot. Kdissert or kivio have vertical toolbars as
> well. So I think vertical toolbars do make sense under special
> circumstances.

This is very true.  Do items in the vertival bars for Kdissert and Kivio
have the items also in the drop down menu?  If not, perhaps we need to
define another type of menu.

> KPDF uses three radio buttons in the toolbar to change between three
> mouse modes: a browse mode, in which the mouse is used to scroll through
> a document. a selection mode in which the user uses the mouse cursor to
> select text. And last a zoom mode with which the user can zoom in and
> out. Of course they don't look like the radio buttons we can see in
> dialogs. They are buttons in a row of which only one can be toggled at
> the same time. I can't think of a better way to show the user what mode
> she is in and combine that with an easy way to change the mode at the
> same time.

hmm.. ill have to think about this more.  reviewing more interfaces i see
that attributes are usually select boxes and related actions are toggles. 
modes tend to be radio buttons unless there are a lot of them.

attributes -> select boxes
modes -> radio buttons (unless many options) ... -> select boxes

sound right?

> Have a look at kmail. There you have a toolbar button called "check mail
> in". If it is pressed and released at once all mail accounts are checked
> for new mail. If the mouse button is pressed and held, a sub menu
> appears with which one can choose one specific mail account to be
> checked. Kmail's "Replay" and "Forward"-buttons behave similarly. The
> "Up"- and "Back"-buttons in Konqueror do so, too. I hope you thought of
> such examples when you said "sub menu".

Actually those are very good examples I didnt think of.  The example I was
thinking of was a bad interface example in the Java guidelines.  Basically
there was a file "button" on the tool bar which imitated the menu bar
"file" menu.  perhaps the submenus in toolbar items would be good only for
related or grouped actions ("save, save as..", "new, new file, new
project", "check mail, all, accountA, accountB", "back, back page3, back
page2, back page1").