Applet positions

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Wednesday 12 March 2008, Ismael Asensio wrote:
> In my (always humble) opinion, resize of applets in the desktop should be
> made by dragging sensitive edges of the handle, that is, just like normal
> windows. I don't know if this has been discussed before and was rejected
> because any technical, usability, practical reason, but in the user
> perspective I feel it the most "natural" way to resize the applet. 

first, some ground principles:

* plasma is a means to manage collections of widgets that aid workflow
	* implication: plasma is not a drawing program
	* implication: plasma is not a window manager

* interface simplicity keeps learning curves low, interaction speed high, code 
complexity down

so ... we have resize and rotate. they were once connected, but aren't 
anymore. that's good, and gives us more room to make things optimized for it.

so let's look at the options:

* resize handle on each corner
	* how does this match with the other buttons only being in one place?
	* what are the aesthetics of this?

* draggable edges
	* how does one then (easily) drag applets whose contents are undraggable?
		* we currently use the edge specifically for this
	* how is the discoverability of this versus an explicit button?

when looking at a UI departure, it's good to challenge one's self to enumerate 
possible downsides, even if you don't think there are any compelling ones 
(you may be surprised with what you come up with, or you may simply reinforce 
your position quite nicely).

being your own devil's advocate prevents me from having to constantly play 
that role :) and it also may end up with better ideas being proposed the 
earlier in the process.

> I think lancelot resizes the same way, right?

yes, and such departure from interaction consistency is _very_ dubious.

-- 
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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