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List:       kde-look
Subject:    ScreenSize dependent styles to solve default menubar problem?
From:       "Friedrich W. H. Kossebau" <Friedrich.W.H () Kossebau ! de>
Date:       2000-06-07 23:15:43
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Hi!

PROPOSAL:
I had this idea a few days ago: There should be themes which focus only
on things like menubar position (mac/win/...), icon size, font sizes,
and further things which are rather dependent of what size of screen one
has. When starting KDE for the first time (and later) the user could
choose between styles for e.g. 

 - Big Screens (wow): winlikemenu,
                      big icons,
                      big fonts, 
                      big windowhandles

 - Normal big Screens: winlikemenu, 
                       normal sized icons,
                       ...

 - Normal small screens: maclikemenu,
                         ...                         

 - Small screens (640 X 400 or lower): maclikemenu,
                                       small windowhandles,
                                       ...

Last one should be thought of especially because of handheld computers
powered by Linux & Co. coming soon thanks to Transmeta et al.! Don't we
want to use KDE there too? 

REASONING:
Each screen size demands its own user interface. Why? Think of the
distances on the screen (eye focus, and some said mouse moving) or the
available space. One will say people need consistency. But aren't we
able to use a palm pilot and a pc at the same time? Perhaps we got used
to because we know the reasons for the differences. Non-technicians
around me do prove this (at least to me ;-).

THOUGHTS:
So this should be the approach by KDE (& Co. :-). No default at all, but
recommandations because of circumstances.

Perhaps this choice should be only available in the KDE config path of
the FirstTimeWizard (shouldn't this be Konqy? Artists go! ;-), so pure
winstyle, macstyle, and beosstyle followers won't be confused ;-)

Later on everything should of course still be personally customizable.
Freedom for the user, I wish :-)

Concerning the ignoring behaviour of non-kde apps: Hopefully there will
be some standards some day. But should we wait until then? There are a
lot of kde-apps that could replace at least partially most of these
other apps. Or we could ask the authors to join our efforts. Or help
them with coding (quickly said, I know ;-)

There has to be one to start doing it this way to show how nice it is.
If it is :-(

QUESTIONS:
What do you think of this?

And are there any other that would like a hiding maclikemenu?
What about having it as another panel: menu only an applet (full or
pulldown), next to other applets like clock, device symbols, mail
indicator...


Friedrich

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