on the tabbar widget

[Celeste Lyn Paul]

On Friday 01 August 2008 17:19:19 Marco Martin wrote:
> On Friday 01 August 2008, Celeste Lyn Paul wrote:
> > On Friday 01 August 2008 14:56:14 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > > On Friday 01 August 2008, Celeste Lyn Paul wrote:
> > > > I'm jumping in to the conversation late, but can someone post a
> > > > screenshot of tabbar?  I noticed the screenshot in the simple frame
> > > > review request had a dialog called "tabbbar test" with a series of
> > > > buttons called tabs.  What is this for exactly?
> > >
> > > same thing a tabwidget is used for in application gui's, but usable on
> > > the canvas (so it can manage not only QWidgets, but also
> > > QGraphicsWidgets). that latter detail is why we have to make one
> > > ourselves in the first place =/
> >
> > Hmm.. well here's the thing..  the example in "tabbar test" is Button
> > navigation, not Tabbed navigation.  There is a visual requirement for the
> > tab affordance to be connected to the container in order for it to be
> > perceived as a "tab".  What is in the screenshot is still navigation, but
> > a different model than "tabs".
> >
> > That's cool if you want to use button navigation to to replace tab
> > navigation, but you shouldn't really call them tabs because they aren't.
>
> they are qtabbars so tecnically thay are..

To the user they are buttons.  If it looks like a button and acts like a 
button, then they will treat it like a button.  You can use buttons as a 
navigation model, but keep in mind the conceptual model is slightly different 
than tabs.

> i didn't tought about this problem. thay was designed like that mostly for
> the look.
> i can try to draw a frame around it but i'm not sure if it will be possible
> to make it not look too visually heavy

Well it doesn't matter if you want to use "buttons" as a navigation model as 
long as you do it right.  Although looking at the screenshot again, the 
buttons might make the different screens look modal, instead of like pages 
the way screens of tabs look.  This could induce some pretty weird behavior 
(from the user).  Then again, it also sortof looks and works like a web links 
navigation model.  If the user puts 2 and 2 together, then there might not be 
any problems.  I dont know how easy 2+2 will be without underlines on the out 
of focus tabs/buttons though.

*shrugs* ... lots of unknowns...

> Cheers,
> Marco Martin
>
> > (just my 0.02)
>
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-- 
Celeste Lyn Paul
celeste at kde.org
KDE Usability Project
usability.kde.org