[Panel-devel] kalming kickoff

[Sven Burmeister]

On Montag, 12. November 2007, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Monday 12 November 2007, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > On Monday 12 November 2007, Jan de Mooij wrote:
> > > On Nov 12, 2007 8:24 PM, Ivan Čukić <ivan.cukic+kde at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > feedback appreciated.
> > > >
> > > > IMHO, the rectangles (rounded or not) should have a full width...
> > > > this way (most notably
> > > > http://bddf.ca/~aseigo/kickoff_snaps/box_around_text_subtext_always_s
> > > >ho wi ng.png) it looks a bit ... hm ... disorganised? (like the bars
> > > > aren't a part of the item on the left)
> > >
> > > I agree with this, and i think most people do. If you use a background
> > > please give it full width. It looks much better IMHO.
> >
> > *sigh* yes, offering screenshots was probably a really bad idea on my
> > part. please apply the patch and try it out.
>
> here's a screencast (2.2MB) that shows things a bit better, though you'll
> still have to imagine the contrast issues with the usage bars:
>
> http://plasma.kde.org/media/kickoff_delegate.avi
>
> my own testing has been done on LCDs in both bright light and low light
> conditions.

I am one of those that also thinks that having a coloured bar is the most 
obvious and hence best for usability but somehow the applications-tab looked 
best to me because the icon and the text actually became active, i.e. changed 
state. Either the boldness was less before or the video is just too big, i.e. 
my fonts were smaller and thus it was less obvious to me when I had a look at 
it before the coloured background was added.

I use opensuse so I am quite familiar with the menu and the coloured bar as 
means to mediate to the user which item is currently selected.

However I did notice that while this worked on the applications-tab, on the my 
computer-tab I imideately thought that all devices were disabled/not 
available, because they were greyed out.

So my personal impression is that both, icon as well as the label have to 
become active, i.e. change to make it work best! If there was not that issue 
with greyed out icons == somehow disabled I would switch my opinion about the 
blue background being neccessary.

The only thing that comes to my mind, if changing the colour of an icon is not 
an option is to make it bigger

Another issue I have is that I usually look at the whole menu when searching 
for an item, without moving the mouse. So if I want to read the categories 
this becomes harder because they are greyed out if not hovered.

Even though I did not hink I would, I have to agree with Aaron that it is 
better to not display the second line in the menu if the item is not hovered 
because it makes the menu look to full.

Even though it would change the way I work with the menu a bit, I have to say 
that in the end I think that if there is no other option to make the icon 
change state then greying out, I would support the applications-tab style. 
This would cost that the user has to point to the item one wants more 
information about and pay that there is a very clean GUI with not too much 
information at once and a very clear change in all parts of a selected item.

Sven