[Okular-devel] Find bar

[Florian Graessle]

Pino Toscano wrote On 14.02.2007 18:58 Uhr:
> Hi,
> 
> I've in my HD a patch that could be committed (given that the comments on the 
> Dot about the recent article about document viewers in KDE 4).
> The patch is about introducing a find bar on the bottom (ala Firefox), just 
> like Kate is doing in its KDE 4 version.
> 
> The only thing why I kept it here is the following:
> one of the possible actions of a link is to perform a specified action, like 
> going to the next page, to the last, etc..., and to start the search for 
> something in the document. This is typical with presentation generated with 
> the beamer module of LaTeX (it's the magnify glass among the small icons on 
> the footer of every slide).
> The problem arises in presentation mode: in that mode, we can't show the find 
> bar of the pageview. acroread shows a small floating window with a line edit 
> and a search button. What should we do in the case, even from an usable point 
> of view (Florian and Sharad)?
> 
> Ideas? opinions?

As of now I can think of two options - each with its own drawbacks:

a) Use the find dialog
- options that can't be activated
- usual (modal) dialog annoyances
- is often "in the way"

b) Use a (fixed) search bar at the bottom
+ consistent with bottom search bars known from okular itself and other
apps like kate, konversation, firefox and the like
+ always at the same place
+ unobtrusive and visually appealing if done right ;-)
+ can use borders to ease button aiming (good old Fitts' Law)
- may obscure content

My suggestion: use a search bar that has an initially (fixed) position
and can still be rearranged if necessary (make use of affordance to make
it obvious it can be dragged). That way we'd have a nice default
location but still offer a way to reveal obscured content (which - with
the bar at the bottom - is a rather rare case anyway I think).

Further thoughts?

Florian