Auto-hiding panels

[Martin Klapetek]

On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 11:27 AM, Marco Martin <notmart at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tuesday 14 October 2014, Martin Klapetek wrote:
> >
> > I'd like to change this for Plasma panels to not have any resistance or
> > very minimal one, basically get it into a state that slamming the mouse
> > against a screen edge will show the panel easily, without requiring an
> > additional push.
>
> i'm a bit concerned this would cause a lot of unwanted activations, is the
> first complain i hear about autohide panels, and the reson back in the
> days i
> stopped using them


In this case it's the 'wanted' activation that's not working too nicely. I
think that auto-hiding panel that requires two slams against a screen edge
to appear is just worse to have than couple of unwanted activations.

As for non-precise pointing devices - this might actually highlight the
problem even more - you may not be too precise with it, so what you do is
you slam the pointer towards the edge, that's the easiest thing you can do
with less-precise devices - drag it/push it strongly in one direction. But
the current state actually requires careful navigation around the
screenedge like slow movement towards it or doing the same movement twice
to trigger the panel, so imo the current situation is even worse with those
devices (and I'm thinking people with lessened hand mobility, trackballs,
touchpads and stylus-tablets...what I missed?).

There is also another angle to this - we could make the auto-hiding
algorithm more clever and better handling the unwanted activation - eg. if
you quickly go to the edge and quickly go out, the hiding delay could be
minimal, if you stay longer or not move so quickly away from the panel, the
hiding delay could be longer etc. Eike did some similar stuff in Kicker.

Cheers
-- 
Martin Klapetek | KDE Developer
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