Please make the tab area able to show more tabs (continued)

[Alexander Shaduri]

Hi all,
This is a continuation of a long discussion at
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=203972

I'd like to say that I'm sorry for constant nagging, it's all for kdevelop users
(me included) after all. :)


In reply to Andreas Pakulat's comment # 14:

> > A constantly displayed close icon (so it's not purely information), which
> > changes to "modified" only when the document is modified - I don't think it's
> > _that_ confusing
> 
> You're misremembering how this works in kdevelop3. There was the icon on the
> tab all the time and only when you hovered it you got a close icon. Thats why
> its a hidden features and hidden features are bad usability.

I guess I could have been more clear. Yes, the kdevelop3 way was probably
not very nice. But kdevelop4 could improve on that by displaying the close
icon all the time, changing it to some other "modified" icon only when modified.
The modified state indicator can actually be something else (not an icon, that is).
For example, it could be just an alternate text color for the tab title.

> > (95% of IDE users are power users, after all).
> 
> My experience shows that they're not. In fact those people that really have
> problems with KDevelop after the first start and for whom we try to improve the
> usability are people that haven't ever seen an IDE.

Well, I'd say the cmake/autotools build system is the most hard thing for
newbies to wrap their minds around, not the placement of the close buttons.

People who haven't seen an IDE will lose that status after an hour of using it,
so, that's a rather limited audience you're targeting.
The actual users, on the other hand, are the ones suffering from the newbie-oriented
interfaces.


> > Not sure about your Konqueror, but mine certainly does _not_ display the close
> > icons on tabs. It has a single close icon for the whole tab bar (to the right).
> > While I may have changed that from the default (I don't remember exactly), at
> > least it gives an option to do so. So, no "any KDE4 app" here.
> 
> I was a bit imprecise there I guess, I mean that all KDE4 apps that have a
> close icon on their tabs will have it on the right additionally to the normal
> icon on the left.

Again, haven't seen any applications (aside from Konqueror, which doesn't
count as "all"). The icon to the left may be useful for Konqueror (to display a favicon),
but is largely useless for kdevelop, so that's not a fair comparison.

 
> > So far, the possible solutions for improving the tab bar are:
> > 1. Allow hiding the col / row area.
> > 2. Allow moving the col / row area to the status bar, and displaying
> > information for active document only, in case of split views.
> 
> Can you please separate one of those into a separate wish.

Should I file a wishlist for this (and the ones below)?


> > 4. Make the close button change to "modified" button (the same close button,
> > but with some effect maybe?).
> 
> This doesn't make any sense to me.

This is explained above.

> > 5. Hide the tab-specific close buttons, maybe add a single close button for the
> > whole tab bar. (See Konqueror with "Show close button on tabs" disabled).
> 
> Another wish please.
> 
> > 6. Make the tab bar stretch the whole window width, above the left/right panels
> > (see Opera). (This adds space for about 2 more tabs, for people who care more
> > about functionality than the looks after the first 5 minutes).
> 
> Not an option even as an optional feature IMHO. I don't want to cripple
> kdevelops looks or how it feels when being used for such a minor thing.

Two extra tabs may be considered minor by those who don't use them.
For the actual users they may be life-savers.


> > 7. Fix the maximum constant width for the tabs, ellipsizing the text. This
> > helps with very long filenames. The full filenames can be displayed as
> > tooltips.
> 
> Another wish.
> 
> > 8. Make the tabs shrink in width (up to some minimum size, maybe) if they don't
> > fit. (See Konqueror, Opera, Firefox). Again, the tooltips will help here.
> 
> Not sure what you mean with "shrink". If the widget/style decides that n pixel
> are needed for a tab, then kdevelop shouldn't change that.

That means that each tab occupies (tabbar_width)/(tab_count) area.
If the result is less than minimum allowed size, the expander arrows show up.
Again, check Konqueror, Opera and Firefox to see what I mean (they don't
implement the minimum allowed size though I think).


> > 9. Multi-line tab bar. I think Firefox had an option for that, but I can't find
> > it now. Opera offers 3 ways here: "No wrapping (aka shrink)", "Wrap to multiple
> > lines", "Show extenders".
> 
> Needs far too much code as optional feature IMHO.

I'm not a fan of multi-line tab bars, but someone may be still interested...
I just listed this as one of the options.

> > So, should we do a web poll or something? :)
> 
> Thats completely useless as in the end of the day the only thing that matters
> is if you can find a developer to implement it.

Well, if you reject the proposed features right away, nobody's going to waste
their time implement them, right?


Thanks,
Alexander