Some UI nitpicks

[David Johnson]

On Sunday 10 December 2000 01:23 pm, Bart Szyszka wrote:

> But then how do you account for the wasted space that'll be there when the
> panels don't fill the right edge of the screen?

Nothing in life is perfect :-( 

> As far as your screenshot goes, is that what tabs look like with your
> particular KDE2 theme or are those actually just toggled buttons?

They're toggled buttons. They should be tabs, as that's more standard for how 
it's used. But Tabs are going to take up a bit more room.

> And will
> I be able to drag a tab/button from one row of them into the other row like
> I'm able to do in Photoshop? Also, would people be able to arrange the
> panels horizontaly?

Currently you can't do that. If they were real docking windows, you would 
have more flexibility. KDE Studio has some pretty good docking windows. Maybe 
the project should look at those.

> What about being able to have multiple images on the screen at
> the same time? That's absolutely essential.

Currently you can only have multiple images under the "tabs". You can't 
display more than one at a time. I hope this get's addressed.

The simplest way to get multiple images on the screen is to do the GIMP way. 
And when you think about it, that's exactly the same way Photoshop does it, 
except that it wraps all the windows in a parent window (surrogate desktop) 
instead of in a root window.

As I see it, the advantages, disadvantages of both methods are:

MDI advantage: friendly to screen real estate, organized
SDI advantage: intuitive interface that follows WM conventions
MDI disadvantage: confusing interface that implements its own conventions
SDI disadvantage: lost windows, screen hog

A variation of the KDE Studio docking windows might be a good compromise.

-- 
David Johnson
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