PlasMate ~ UI and other stuff

[Yuen Hoe Lim]

Hi,

Haven't heard from you (plasmate) guys for awhile, guess you guys are busy
:) Anyway, just like some input here. As per the quick discussion the other
day, I recently had the editor component tree widget separated out into a
new dock widget, so it no longer gets replaced by the katepart that gets
loaded when you click a file. I've been toying around with the layout and
dockwidget positionings since - and I can't help thinking that, with the
addition of this new dockwidget, the whole UI has become awfully cluttered.
This is about the best layout I can come up with atm:

http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/plasmateclutter.jpg

I think the main problem now is that there are too many 'vertical'
dockwidgets - the timeline, the sidebar, and now the editor tree. Vertical
dockwidgets only fit naturally on the left/right dockareas, but having three
of them there, plus the mainwidget in the center, really makes the thing
so... layered, and crowded. Not to mention virtually unusable on a small
screen.

Some possible ways around it:

   - Make one (or more) of the 'vertical' dockwidgets 'horizontal' so that
   we can fit it snugly on the top dockarea instead. I think the editor tree
   has to stay vertical, so it'd have to be either the sidebar actions menu or
   the timeline widget, both of which I'm loathe to touch without first
   consulting with you all :) Those two are now QListWidget derivatives, and it
   doesn't look like there's an easy way to 'horizontalize' them without
   rewriting quite abit of code.
   - The old mockups:

   http://skitch.com/michaelrudolph/ba3j9/plasmate-editor2
   http://skitch.com/michaelrudolph/ba3cg/plasmate-editor-timeline

   suggested an interesting 'overlay' effect for the timeline - and also
   that the timeline be hidden all the time until a button at the bottom is
   clicked.
   - I dunno... ideas?

Also, it seems like alot of stuff with PlasMate is currently 'hanging'. The
timeline seems to work nicely, but what's gonna happen with the missing
publish widget and documentation widget? I've been spending my free time
hacking away at the editor and previewer and there are certainly plenty more
work needed with those two but I was just wondering about the larger view of
the project, since no one seems to be paying much attention to it at the
moment :)

----
Jason "moofang" Lim Yuen Hoe
http://yuenhoe.co.cc/
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