Toolbox Brainstorming

[Marco Martin]

On Sunday 06 January 2008, Chani wrote:
> huh. I agree that having the desktop toolbox on a panel would be weird. if
> the desktop toolbox is meant to be strongly associated with the desktop
> containment, then it should be on the desktop, and stay there.
> but then I get confused as to whether it should zoom out with the
> containment: if it does, then it's tiny and hard to use. if it doesn't,
> then it's suddenly this separate magic thing and I start expecting it to be
> associated with the corona instead.
>
> I seem to remember there being agreement that it should not be zoomed out.
> this brings up some questions in my mind:
>
> how do we zoom back in if there's more than one containment?
> how do we avoid having several toolboxes on top of each other (one per
> desktop containment)?
> how do we know which containment it's associated with while zoomed out?
would be possible to still put the toolbox in the containment and to not zoom 
it? (something like enlarging the toolbox while shrinking the rest), because 
zooming out the toolbox would be tricky to use when too tiny, but the 
operations are all very local to the containment, even zooming in it must 
enlarge the intended one.
as for the aspect i was thinking something like this very quick and very dirty 
mockup http://www.notmart.org/misc/plasma-zoom.jpg
it has his problems (ie it assumes there are 4 desktop containments) but it 
illustrates a zoomed out desktop with a not zoomed toolbox.
or maybe with an aspect like that the toolbox could even be at corona level 
and make the operations on the containmentthat is under the mouse at the 
moment.

Cheers,
Marco Martin