Final KDevelop 4.0 UI

[Vladimir Prus]

On Friday 22 May 2009 23:07:49 Niko Sams wrote:
> On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 11:55 AM, David Nolden <zwabel at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > But meanwhile I've thought a bit how the area switching could be made more
> > intuitive, and how we could put together the components we have/will have into
> > a neat UI.
> >
> > In these mockups you see the results.
> >
> > Since when you switch between areas, you essentiall switch _everything_ below,
> > including tool-views and files, I think tabs are the most natural and
> > intuitive way of expressing this.
> >
> > Then at the right side of those area-tabs there should be the tool-bar. By
> > default it should contain very few, but useful actions. "Save" should be the
> > only standard action there, apart from that we should add a bunch of tool-
> > buttons that are really useful, like "build", "debug", or something like that.
> I really like the tabs - they are very intuitive. Behind every tab a
> individual activity is hidden.
> Your second version is much better - as more correct.
> However I would move them to the right. (So the default menubar isn't
> changed that much)
> 
> > Also as part of the toolbar, there should be a quickopen line, to increase
> > discoverability of quickopen. As soon as the user starts typing into it, it
> > should expand, and show the usual quickopen user interface.
> Discoverability is very important.
> It could be prettier - but I like the general idea.
> 
> > Then, there could be the breadcrumb implementation we have. It cannot replace
> > the tabs, but it is useful as an additional knowledge source for "where am
> > I?", and allows switching to related files using the mouse.
> What do we show there? filesystem-structure or namespace/class/method structure?
> I'm not sure this has advantages over the project view. (except it
> needs less space)

It is one advantage. Beside, breadcrumbs clearly show where you are currently,
which helps with bug projects. And yes, I expect breadcrumbs to eventually
show class/method structure as well.

- Volodya