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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Default kicker postion
From:       "Jamethiel Knorth" <jamethknorth () hotmail ! com>
Date:       2004-06-09 22:37:58
Message-ID: BAY7-F59d6xHCpWA0S00000af87 () hotmail ! com
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>From: Sébastien Laoût <sebastien.laout@tuxfamily.org>
>Date: Wed, 09 Jun 2004 23:12:43 +0200
>
>Le mer 09/06/2004 à 18:04, Florian Graessle a écrit :
>
>Come to me my friend :-D
>
> > You always say that a normal kicker size is
> > better. But why? It has a lot of flaws and wastes precious space.
>
>I'm asking the same question.
>
> > It also wastes a lot of space. Especially on systems with low resolution
> > I don't think it a good idea to trim down precious space which should be
> > better used to draw the windows.
>
>I agree.
>But I'm perhapse too paranoid : I hate to lose any pixels of my screen.
>Screens are already small...

The issues with a small panel on small screens are mostly that it does not 
have space for many tasks in the taskbar (it is very short and only one row 
tall).

The issue with the small panel on most screens is that the majority of the 
applets are designed to work at size 'normal'. As examples: the mixer plugin 
becomes too small of a target, the system monitor is too small to be easily 
read, the mldonkey applet doesn't line up right, the math 
expression/application launcher are indistinguishable, the character 
selector takes up too much space, and the media control is too long because 
it can't stack the controls and the seek bar. The default size should work 
with the majority of the applets.

Possibly, that calls for the applets to be redesigned, but that must happen 
FIRST.

> > Large icons as targets are by first sight a nice idea. But you forget
> > that the kicker icons are the icons the user gets accustomed to fastest
> > (as opposed to random toolbar icons, file type icons or the icons in
> > the KMenu, which btw are normally very small). They are always there,
> > are static, don't change their funcionality. Plus they are at an edge,
> > even at a corner of the screen, and can thus be found very easily.
> > Furthermore there aren't too many, and people don't tend to put there
> > many more (maybe because the big buttons are wasting space). If they do
> > they do it by purpose and normally in a personal order that doesn't need
> > the visual support the big icons give. The only problem of smaller icons
> > in my opinion is poor icon design with too many colors and too much
> > photo realism. But that's another story..
>
>I totaly agree.
>And a lot of distributions also resize down the kicker size.
>Theire is certainly a reason !!

Yes, and they may be wrong in that reason. They are trying to make it look 
like windows, usually. However, it is an issue for accessibility in many 
cases, it makes many applets useless or restricted, and it makes the taskbar 
very short. And, in all that, it saves 16 pixels.

>I also wanted to point out the two row taskbar : when closing a window,
>all taskbar entries are moved up / down...
>It's not very good because we can't expect the position of a task in the
>taskbar.
>And we then must can in TWO dimentions.
>And it's know to be not good for usability.

That is a problem, but not a major one. The tasks do go in a logical order: 
first to the top of their column, then the bottom of the next. This is the 
progression used for most items wrapping through columned lists. Where a 
program will be can be reliably determined ahead of time.

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