KDE/kdevplatform/shell

[David Nolden]

Am Donnerstag, 6. November 2008 21:25:20 schrieb Andreas Pakulat:
> Whats the problem with the documents list or the first 8 files in
> quickopen? I understand that you want to keep an overview of what you're
> working on right now, but 8 tabs already fail to work for me on my laptop.
> I already have 2 of them not visible, even more if the filenames are a bit
> longer.

The problem is that I like having that list permanently visible for overview, 
and don't want it to waste tons of space like the document-view. The problem 
is that we currently can only show toolview per side, and for that reason I 
wouldn't consider using the document-view on my 1600x1200 screen. It's simply 
too much wasted space for such a small feature. Only my screen, the tabs 
comfortably hold 8 files, and that still feels good.

The major difference to any other solution is: You see the names, thus have an 
overview what you're working on, and to open one of them you just move the 
mouse-cursor there and click it. That's just one action, and much more 
comfortable than not knowing what files are open, clicking onto a dropdown, 
then seeing what files actually are open, thinking, and picking one.

Quickopen is a much better solution, that is true, but only in keyboard mode. 
A good ide should be usable in keyboard mode, as well as in mouse mode. Me 
personally I use both, and newbies will probably primarily use the mouse 
mode. :)

I think the problem of open files can not be solved by any new widget. But we 
can improve the management of open files, for example allowing to close them 
directly from the quickopen list using one keystroke.