Thoughts about statusbar

[Martin Gräßlin]

On Tuesday 25 October 2011 20:41:23 David Edmundson wrote:
> KDE Usability is the mailing list I had in my mind when I wrote it. I
> didn't mean do distract from the focus of a thread I think is quite
> important.
Interesting that two devs mentioned the usability mailing list. I hope this is 
an indication that it is useful again. My last interaction with this list was 
no reply to a very concrete question from the KWin team for usability guidance 
[1]. Since then I considered the list as just dead.
> 
> Anyway, given I've decided I should pay more attention to plasma and
> get away from just hacking constantly on one project, to make up for
> it here is a breakdown of statusbars the most commonly used apps in
> KDE. This was made with a fresh account with no settings altered.
<snip>
> 
> I think the important thing to do is to make a list of the uses of the
> status bar; displaying the URL of links, showing download progress,
> showing errors, showing the filename etc. Then to analyse these on a
> use by use basis (not an app by app basis) "where is the best place
> this piece of information" (which could be nowhere, a KMessageBox,
> tooltips, menus, or even remaining in the status bar). If an app then
> ends up with nothing left in the status bar it's time to remove it.
This matches with what I had in mind when I wrote that we need to extract the 
useful messages into some better fitting UI elements.
> 
> For me the issue isn't so much wasted space as much as an
> inconsistency in where the same piece information is displayed between
> apps.
+1 and that's not limited to the statusbar :-(
> 
> (sorry for the essay)
not at all, it was an interesting read

Cheers
Martin

[1] http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-usability&m=130393074318976&w=2
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