making kickoff have full-width selection rects (on hover)

[Jamboarder]

----- Original Message ----
From: Celeste Lyn Paul <celeste at kde.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2008 6:26:35 AM

> 
Also, 
does 
no 
one 
else 
care, 
have 
an 
option, 
have 
a 
preference, 
or 
think 
this 
> 
is 
an 
issue?  
So 
far 
this 
has 
been 
a 
discussion 
between 
three 
people, 
a 
> 
developer, 
and 
artist, 
and 
a 
designer 
(that 
sounds 
like 
the 
beginning 
of 
a 
> 
bad 
bar 
joke).

Ok, I'll chime in, for what it's worth (even if it is painfully prolonging this discussion).  The full width selection (or at least the everything-to-the-right-of-the-icon selection) seems fine to me for a couple reasons:

1. If we're worried about how the icons look against the selection, it might be worth considering that there are already many color schemes shipped with KDE4 with a variety of colors upon which the icons sit.  Some will look good to some and not to others.  It's also done in menus in many, if not most, apps (I know, kickoff's a launcher not a menu).  I concede that there may well be colors against which the icons will look universally bad.  Not sure if this is the case here yet.

2. The original usability study on Kickoff was done with a full width selection. Do we really understand what we may be surrendering/gaining as we diverge from that? Goodness knows I'm not suggesting that the original kickoff is sacred in whole or in part. My own opinion, though, is that the size of selection rect is basic enough to user interaction that it might be worth a few "coffee-house" tests. :-)

All that said, I won't be all that devastated if it ends up remaining as it currently is.  

I should confess that I'm generally rather more of the persuasion that says make it look good then make it usable (yes I'm look forward to Raptor). Yeah, yeah I know, but hopefully that hasn't terribly tainted my view here.  

Hope this helps,
Andrew