[Panel-devel] kalming kickoff

[Thomas Fjellstrom]

On Mon November 12 2007, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Monday 12 November 2007, Sven Burmeister wrote:
> > The only thing that comes to my mind, if changing the colour of an icon
> > is not an option is to make it bigger
>
> i tried this. it looked pretty odd. it would really require a lot more
> vertical space, some animation and probably even a parabolic effect (ala
> the mac dock) to look at all decent. =/
>
> i have been through so many permutations of this stuff ... font sizes,
> faces, bold / italic, icon sizes, opacities, highlight rect sizes and
> opacities, etc, etc...
>
> > 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.
>
> yes, that's actually one of the combos not shown in that video is "box
> behind text, activate the icon and show the subtext on hover" .. it seems
> to work really well in practice.
>
> it also just occured to me now that i can apply an opacity to the painter
> itself to make the icons paint semi-transparent... it has essentially the
> same effect as the current lightening with the added bonus that if there is
> a background picture, it will show through the unselected icons ever to
> slightly.
>
> i've also fixed the top margin of the text properly so that the top of the
> text box aligns with the top of the icon but there are 2 pixels between the
> top of the text box and the top of the text. looks much better like that.
>
> i've also made the subtitle text dark vs black and increased the alpha on
> the highlight rect a bit more for better contrast.
>
> additionally, i've fixed up the search bar and contents area to have proper
> alignment as per Wade's observations. tab bar is still messed up, but this
> is a step in the right direction ...
>
> you can see where i'm at now here (846k file):
>
> 	http://plasma.kde.org/media/mycomputerpage.avi
>
> (note, btw, that all these screencasts are horizontally stretched due to
> the wonders of screen recording software available for x11)
>
> still no animations of course, but note how things are better aligned, how
> the margin within the highlight rect is proper, how the icons and usage
> bars "jump" slightly in appearance when hovered, the cleanliness of the
> page when nothing is hovered and the presentation of the subtitle text
> itself.

I wonder if it wouldn't be an option to extend the rounded rect to just before 
the usage bar? Or as wide as the widest item (not including icon or usage 
bar).

-- 
Thomas Fjellstrom
tfjellstrom at strangesoft.net