KDE 4.2 Toolbars

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Wednesday 12 November 2008, Maciej Pilichowski wrote:
> > Nuno Pinheiro:
> > Well some time ago I sudgested to Celeste  that we should use in
> > the thoolbars text along side icons instead of text under icons.
> > Couse:
> > 1 Looks Pretier.
>
> which is quite personal taste.

as is everything art related, which is why we leave these issues to the 
artists so we don't bikeshed, particularly amongst people who lack the 
expertise to make really well informed visual design decisions.

> > 2 Saves precious vertical space.
>
> and waste (even more precious ;-) ) horizontal space.

not on the average laptop which today has more horizontal than vertical space.

> > 3 Remains a prety big hit area.
>
> which makes no difference.

yes, his point was that it isn't a regression in this respect

> > 4 Its more readable (no need to read rows horozontaly) just one
> > line
>
> which takes more time to scan (read) toolbar and move mouse more (how
> many users have toolbars which takes the entire screen?)

this assumes movement between the toolbar items with the mouse rather than 
movement from the view area to the toolbar.

> Another advantage of text under cursor as you can read separately
> icons and text, because those two form two lines really.

that's the point being made with #5, i suppose: it prevents having to scan two 
rows. the human mind is pretty good at ignoring different content types, 
though, so glancing at a text-aside toolbar, it's still easy to just "look" at 
the icons.

> Since KDE team does not sell
> computers/monitors I say we leave that decision to user. People with
> 16:9 monitor probably will choose text alongside while owners of 4:3
> monitor will tend to choose text under icons.
>
> So please offer both modes.

we already do. this is about defaults. theoretically we could change the 
default based on the screen ratio... see the attached untested patch =)

anyways, +1 for the suggested changed. we should do it before beta so we can 
get feedback from people far in advance of release.

-- 
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 Qt Software

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