KDevelop 4.0 UI

[David Nolden]

Am Samstag 23 Mai 2009 02:11:50 schrieb Andreas Pakulat:
> On 22.05.09 21:56:22, David Nolden wrote:
> > Am Freitag 22 Mai 2009 21:40:14 schrieb 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
> >
> > I think that's wrong. Why is it bad for usability if there is no white
> > space?
>
> Because one needs whitespace to not get the feeling of that thing on the
> screen jumping at you with 100 spikes or something like that. _I_ am
> used to IDE's and even I feel that the mockup you should completely
> overloads the area between titlebar and editor.
>
> > It is good for usability when the important features are discoverable and
> > intuitive.
>
> There's a difference between making a feature accessible and trying to
> cramp as much as possible into as little space as possible without any
> measuring of what looks good and what doesn't scare people away. There's
> a reason Qt creator doesn't put every feature it has into the toolbar.
It's not "as much as possible into smallest possible space", but "everything 
we want to show, into small as possible space". So if you feel like the 
breadcrumbs should not be there, say just that. ;-)

> > Buttons on the other hand may lead to confusion here, "Where the fuck
> > are my documents?"
>
> Well, if we're going to remove editor views when switching between code
> and debug, I'm going to fork this project. Thats the most hated feature
> in Eclipse I've ever come across. If I want to debug a piece of code, I
> naturally _always_ want all files I had open during the coding phase
> also in the debugging phase.
At least that's what we're doing right now. If it makes sense, I don't know. 
It could make sense if we added some additional management of the contained 
files, aka "Working Sets".

> > > 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.
> >
> > Not sure about that. I think we should give the user a well usable IDE
> > out-of- the-box, and to me that means that it should not waste space.
>
> There's a difference between wasting space and effectively using
> white-space. A book is doesn't have text from the top-most left corner
> to the bottom-most right corner of a page and there's a reason this
> doesn't happen. In the same way there's a bit of whitespace between
> lines of text. And similarly we need some whitespace in the GUI of our
> application to not make it look cluttered and overwhelm new users with
> "things" they don't understand.
> > Showing the text on the right side of the icons by default might be an
> > option.
>
> As I said, not obeying KDE-wide desktop settings is _not_ an option,
> IMHO.

If we have a very limited set of toolbar buttons, and we feel that the won 
space increases productivity, then we should choose a better default for our 
application, instead of obeying kde-wide defaults brainlessly.

For example Showfoto does the same: It by default shows the buttons with label 
on right side, to increase the size available for the actual picture.

I think we should also pick "Icon with text on right side" by default..

Greetings, David