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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Taskbar RMB popup layout
From:       Lubos Lunak <l.lunak () suse ! cz>
Date:       2005-03-09 16:48:43
Message-ID: 200503091748.43780.l.lunak () suse ! cz
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On Wednesday 09 of March 2005 16:52, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Wednesday 09 March 2005 07:20, Lubos Lunak wrote:
> >  I personally consider the new layout to be a regression (ok, so this is
> > not really a question).
>
> yes, everytime something is changed in the least someone somewhere
> considers it a regression. to improve or not to improve, this is the
> question.

 And going halfway and doing in the beta phase or not is another question.

>
> > - The close button is now bottommost, and while that might be ok if it
> > was so from the beginning, given that it didn't used to be that way, I've
> > managed to accidentally close several windows during the last couple of
> > days.
>
> blame the person who originally organized the taskbar menu who put the
> Close entry in the _wrong_ place. Quit/Close goes at the bottom of the
> menu. the reason for this are many and well established. this is, if
> anything, a styleguide and usability bug fix.

 So much for theory. Practice says it's a dangerous change that can lead to 
loss of data (Konsole or Konqueror windows don't give "Do you want to save?" 
dialogs). It could have waited for 4.0 at least, if nothing else.

>
> > - The 'To desktop' and 'To current desktop' entries have been moved
> > higher and to the middle of the entries, which makes them rather hard to
> > reach.
>
> i agree that having the Advanced menu at the top is a bit silly. perhaps
> moving it to below Shade would make sense. if it's "Advanced" settings,
> it's not likely the most used item. in fact, it should be filled with some
> of the more esoteric items.
>
> i'd like to see these changes be made consistently in both kwin and the
> taskbar, however.
>
> > And these two entries are probably the only entries (maybe besides
> > 'Close') that really make sense in the taskbar RMB, because these
> > operations are hard to do otherwise. Especially the 'To current desktop'
> > action.
>
> people requested various of those other items. so yes, people do go there
> to select "move", for instance. why? because the window may not be easily
> accessible (e.g. off screen, or in the case of one reporter on a different
> Xinerama screen which had been removed, of all things).

 I specially avoided mentioning this option for that reason. There are some 
actions that may make sense in the taskbar popup as well. But some of the 
options are rather useless there.

>
> and this does reinforce the concept that this is the "window menu". it
> gives us one less menu for people to learn, as they are now consistent
> amongst the places they appear.
>
> > - The fact that the popup now has got more actions makes it only worse,
> > especially given that some of those don't make much sense. Would anybody
> > ever go to taskbar for 'Shade'?
>
> becaues they see the taskbar button as an alternative to the window
> titlebar. which it is in some ways.

 Alternative. But it's not the same. If you move the Advanced submenu below 
Shade, it will be no longer quickly accessible using Alt+F3. And even if this 
menu gets cleaned up (which it could use), you still can't entirely win.

 First of all, the user can simply do KDEWM=openbox or whatever, and the 
popups no longer match. And even with KWin there are some entries which 
Kicker can't easily implement. E.g. with the transparency support, there's 
additional menu entry that controls KWin's internal setting related to 
transparency. And even if I add some way to set it from Kicker as well, 
there's the entry for configuring KWin that doesn't make sense in the taskbar 
popup, or the other way around, the "Current desktop" entry is very useful in 
the taskbar, and very silly in KWin's  menu.

 I'm not against rearranging the menus, but I don't find trying to make them 
exactly the same to be a good idea.

-- 
Lubos Lunak
KDE developer
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