toolbar icons

[Andreas Pakulat]

On 05.08.09 21:58:23, David Nolden wrote:
> Now with the new quickopen- and context-browser stuff, it becomes more and 
> more apparent that the default mode for icons in the kdevelop toolbar should 
> be "Icons Only".
> 
> I'm getting tired of seeing wasty screenshots like this 
> http://frinring.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/binspektpart-in-kdevelop.png in 
> the internet. The default UI should be better than that, something like this 
> http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/8485/kdev4uinew.png, just with some 
> additional more useful icons.
> 
> Other toolbar modes waste tons of vertical space, which is not acceptable in a 
> productivity-oriented IDE, and they also waste a lot of horizontal space, 
> which is used much better by the context-browser and quickopen line.
> 
> So what do you think?

Not an option IMHO, we should be following the KDE setting here and thats text
under icons by default. The reason has been given numerous times, icons
don't tell you what they do unless you already know them from elsewhere.
I've recently taken the test from Nuno about our new icons and I had a
really hard time to identify the right icons for the given concept. (yes
that might also mean that the icons themselves need improvement, but
thats mostly our own fault, nuno has no idea how they should look like
so we need to give him good input)

I can actually easily fit all three toolbars onto the screen without any
 >> arrows. ok, this is 1900, but it also works mostly at 1680. The
context-browser line is usually working best when having its own line.
On 1400 it starts to get crowded, either I make the quickopen line
rather small (which isn't a big deal, because it'll expand as needed -
btw it seems to expand larger as the mainwindow, that is a problem if my
mainwindow is maximized!) or move something into its own line (IIRC
thats the default for the new context browser).

The screenshot above is also misleading, it contains the debug-actions
which shouldn't be shown at all in the code area.
 
> Apart from that, that screenshot shows that the toolbar area switchers are 
> still there. Isn't it time to remove those?

No, once we require KDE 4.3 and hence Qt4.5 we can do that. With KDE 4.2
you still have no way except those toolbar buttons to switch areas.
Which is much more of a problem nowadays as debugging will automatically
switch to debug area.

Andreas

-- 
Stay away from flying saucers today.