Re: [Usability]A Tale of a Toolbar editor

[Biswapesh Chattopadhyay <biswapesh_chatterjee tcscal co in>]

We would really love to have toolbar editing implmented by default in
EggToolbar (we'd like menu and shortcut editing to be implemented as
well and integrate well with the toolbar editor, but that's another
thing). Just a couple of point I feel are relevant from Anjuta's POV:

1. Handling multiple toolbars gracefully is a must, since we have lots
of toolbars which show and hide themselves frequently depending on the
IDE run context. I'm sure other complex apps like Abiword, etc. will
need it too.

2. There should be a way to set the display style for each toolbar
(Text, Icon, Both Horizontal, Both Vertical, Priority Horizontal).
Gustavo implemented most of this at a toolbar level for BonoboUI and I
really like the way it works. Here's a screenie:
	http://sourcebase.sourceforge.net/anjuta2-toolbars.png
[ Note that this complements the Epiphany toolbar editor ]

3. We'd like toolbar customization to be in the toolbar context menu -
somehow makes more sense that way IMHO. But it should also be standalone
function and preferably some widget so that we can embed it in our
preferences dialog. It would be nice to right-click on a toolbar/menu
to customize it.

4. There should be graceful handling of the situation where there's an
large number of toolbar items. I feel the Epiphany style is OK for a
small number of items, but it might be pretty unweildy for a large
number of tool items (say, 100 or so). Besides, D&D for customization is
pretty overrated IMO. It migtht make a cool GUI gimmick but makes life
difficult for users of more complicated apps like office suites and
IDEs. It is also difficult to make it a11y friendly I think. I
personally think the OpenOffice 'Tools->Configure' thing is pretty cool
since it brings menu editing, toolbar and toolbar item customization,
keyboard shortcuts and user-defined event macros under one consistent
GUI. Here're the screenies:
	http://sourcebase.sf.net/oo-eventeditor.png
	http://sourcebase.sf.net/oo-keyeditor.png
	http://sourcebase.sf.net/oo-menueditor.png
	http://sourcebase.sf.net/oo-statuseditor.png
	http://sourcebase.sf.net/oo-tooleditor.png

Hope this helps.

Rgds,
Biswa.