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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: New panel layout
From:       Fred Schaettgen <kde.sch () ttgen ! net>
Date:       2005-08-29 22:15:35
Message-ID: 200508300015.35565.kde.sch () ttgen ! net
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On Monday, 29. August 2005 16:29, Uno Engborg wrote:
> The default height of the panel is too high. It allows for two rows of
> applications in the task bar, and two rows of desktops in the pager.
> This doesn't make use of  the fact that screen edges according Fits law
> is very easy targets for the mouse. I would therefore suggest changing
> the default size of the bottom panel to small.
>
> Making the bottom of the screen panel small, would apart from making the
> items in it more easily clickable, also make more room for  application
> windows as  documents tend to be portrait shaped rather than landscape
> shaped.

Indeed. Looking at the kmail composer window which I have opened full screen 
currently, the actual document is visible in a 1070 x 580 area - almost twice 
as wide than high. The scrollbar indicates that I can see half of the 
document, while the right half of the screen is almost completely empty.

This would be worse if I wouldn't be using the setup you are proposing already 
- and much, much worse on a 16:10 display instead of a 1152x1024 screen.
It's the same for most web pages, for pdf documents, you name it. 

> This leaves us with another problem. The pager would now take too much
> space and not leave enough room for the task bar to show open
> applications.. To solve that I would suggest  removing  everything  but
> the K-menu, the pager and the system tray.
> Now we need to find a place for the things removed. The obvious solution
> would be to do like Gnome and add a panel at the top of the screen as
> well, but that wouldn't work well in KDE as some people use a MacOS-like
> central application menu at the top of the screen. I would therefore
> suggest using a new panel to the center left of the screen.  That panel
> could also hold the icons for the trash and the system that normally
> resides on the desktop usually hidden by open windows. This panel could
> be of size large, to make the icons easily visible or clickable. By
> making the panel centered there would be less risk that it would
> interfere with the bottom panel or MacOS-like application menus if
> turned on.

If there are usability bugs when it covers the full height, then there is 
certainly a solution for them other than shrinking the panel. With full 
height, the panel would have control over three screen edges, leaving the 
upper right for the close button for those how go without a border for 
maximized windows.
There are quite a lot panel applets which don't suffer at all from being 
placed in a vertical panel, especially buttons, k-menu, clock, systray.

I'm really curious about any arguments against it. 
I guess the biggest problem is that it looks just unfamiliar. But I've been 
using it since quite some time and I don't see any problem with it. There are 
applets which just don't work vertically, but the horizontal panel is still 
there after all.
Are there any studies if vertically aligned icons (not text) are more 
difficult to recognize? My feeling is that vertical bars work very well as 
long as there is no text involved. And having big icons in a vertical bar 
doesn't look (and isn't) as wasteful as having them in the densly packed 
horziontal kicker.

Still, this is basically just my (and your) personal preference. It should 
only be considered as a default, if works better for more people than the 
current layout. And that has a lot to do with familiarity.
Having to reeducate both Windows users and also KDE 3.x users might be just 
too much. Stupid.

Fred

-- 
Fred Schaettgen
kde.sch@ttgen.net
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