Comments on: Autohiding widgets: a prototype

By: Nathan (Borker)

Nathan (Borker) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 14:56:54 +0000

This looks like a job for some nice animations… It is already somewhat obvious that your available controls are being effected by the resize as they are disappearing at a disproportionate rate to the other areas of the screen. At the point at which they disappear completely or iconify or what have you, a neat indication of them zooming into icon mode or ‘popping’ as they disappear should assist in notifying the user what has happened

By: litb

litb — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 01:08:48 +0000

ok, i think it is alright as it is. hose toolbars will only be hidden when the window becomes extremely small. i think no caption is needed to say “oh here was a tool. maybe at the very top, there could then be a small bar saying
“Click here, or enlarge the window to show more tools” . And if you click, then the window is resized automatically, so that everything is shown with the minimal window size.

How about that?

By: Prototipo per il ridimensionamento dinamico delle finestre « pollycoke :)

Prototipo per il ridimensionamento dinamico delle finestre « pollycoke :) — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 19:37:49 +0000

[...] delle finestre“, ricordate? Adesso a distanza di un pochissimo sembra essere ufficialmente avviato il progetto che potrebbe portare questa piccola grande miglioria sui nostri [...]

By: Luis

Luis — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 21:44:30 +0000

Hi everyone! Maybe I’m bit out of context here but how important discoverability really is? Take gimp as an example: all the toolboxes can be switched from a menu and are off by default. In koffice they are on by default (which IMHO is a mistake s it totally clutters the working environment and distracts the user from the real work) but still are switchable from the menus. I think it is more important to have a piece of software that will let me work by default, no matter the size of my screen, than one I have to hide all the docks only to see the work space. Anyway, this is great work and I think it should be discussed with both the users and the usability experts.

By: ris

ris — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 14:03:41 +0000

“How about, instead of completely hiding the panels, just minimize them so that only their title is showing?”

Or maybe, if it’s a stack of docks, compress them into a qtoolbox-style stack of rollups. (I say qtoolbox-style because qtoolbox is horibly wasteful of space.)

This would let the user override the chosen dockwidget.

By: Miguel

Miguel — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 13:56:00 +0000

We will have to see a real user case…
But this remind me the auto hide menu options in my colleges’ Microsoft Office.
Wich for me is kind of annoying.

By: Seb Ruiz

Seb Ruiz — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 12:51:33 +0000

Harald, don’t misunderstand me – I think it’s fantastic that you are trying to tackle this issue, and I only wish to point out some of the issues that autohiding brings!

great work!

By: DanaKil

DanaKil — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 12:42:21 +0000

“it could just be tested in a smaller application first to see how it works?”

maybe KTorrent ? It has at least 2 retractable dock that could collapse when the size of the windows become too small.

About the discoverability issue, maybe a passive popup could help… (it would be cool if this auto-hide feature could be enabled or disabled (and the popup too) somewhere in System Settings

By: GreenPeace

GreenPeace — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 12:14:29 +0000

I already say that this is good and may be is best of the year interface improvement!

By: uga

uga — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 10:44:02 +0000

I can imagine a Joe user having two applications side by side to dnd, compare or copy between them, so that this KDE app is reduced in size. But the guy may still _need_ those tools that are hidden. Why not let the guy pick which of them he wants to remove? The application, unfortunately, cannot tell if those “less used” tools are needed

just my 2eur cents.