[Panel-devel] kalming kickoff

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Monday 12 November 2007, Beaudoin Gael wrote:
> Something I find strange is showing additional information only on hover
> (not on the My Computer tab). Why that ?

good question. first off, it's subtext: which means it shouldn't be critical 
to understanding the item. so we are free to show it or not if we choose.

why i did this was for two reasons:

a) information density: humans have limits as to how much we can take in at 
once before it starts becoming noise. by hiding the subtext, it limits the 
amount of information blasted at the user at once. compare the Leave page to 
the recently used page, for instance. the Recently Used page is very clean 
when nothing is selected and you can quickly skip from item to item. the 
Leave page is full of information you probably don't even care about and it 
is much, much more visually noisy and harder to scan

this *really* shows on the Applications tab, btw.

b) selection clarity: it's an added hint for which item is currently selected 
by providing on-select in-line context. this helps make it really clear what 
item is selected.

the My Computer tab looks even better with the subtexts shown on hover only.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Trolltech
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