KDevelop 4.0 UI

[Andreas Pakulat]

On 22.05.09 21:10:11, David Nolden wrote:
> Well actually after digesting this a bit, I think I don't like the approach of 
> using the tabs to manage areas any more. While it is intuitive, it clutters 
> the UI up a bit too much, since there is multiple level of tabs.
> 
> Probably it's better just having some tool buttons that make clear which area 
> is currently selected.

I'll just take this one for my thoughts on this:

It tries to cramp too much stuff into too little space. The toolbar area
has almost no whitespace, thats really bad usability wise. I also think
the tabs-in-tabs is bad and in general tabs along the menu or right
underneath them looks pretty bad. Also, an area can possibly even change
the menu (if it can change the toolbar), so the tabs would need to have
everything in them (we could actually do this by having a QGraphicsView
with an embedded mainwindow and a tab with multiple such graphicsviews,
but I think thats quite a bit overkill).

I don't think we need such a prominent place for switching area's, as
thats not something the user should do all the time - except maybe for a
Documentation area when we get that). KDevelop should automatically
switch the area to the right one, i.e. if an application is started in
the debugger switch to Debug Area, if its not debugged anymore switch
back to Code area. So yes, some toolbuttons in a toolbar for the last 3
used areas should be enough here.

The toolbar should have standard KDE icon sizes and text underneath
them. Forcing it to disobey global KDE settings will get us tons of
bugreports that are absolutely correct. Especially new users need the
text underneath the icons.

I don't think the breadcrumbs view (assuming thats the one we planned to
have) should be under the tabs as the breadcrumbs content naturally
belongs to the file thats being shown.

The search stuff, I'm not sure here. It would naturally fit into its own
bar at the bottom, but would take quite a lot of horizontal space
uselessly. So maybe that could be along with the bottom toolviews? Or
maybe thats not a very prominent place for it... Maybe I'm just biased
by the KDevelop3 combobox in the toolbar, which often doesn't work like
I want it wrt. resizing. So I don't have a strong opinion about moving
the search elsewhere.

In general I _love_ the search idea, especially with the dropdown. Thats
a really great way of bringing the more hidden features like quickopen
to the in-experienced users.

Andreas
 
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