Suggestion for a new UI feature.

[thristian atdot org]

Lots of programs I know of, especially Internet and Communications
programs, are using a tabbed, MDI-style of interface. GnomeICU,
X-Chat, Gnapster, Galeon are the ones I use most frequently. And all
of these applications (and presumably others of the same genre) have a
similar user interface problem: Events happening in documents that are
not presently visible. "Events" could be "new incoming message" or
"page finished loading" or "search complete" or whatever.

Interestingly, all these applications appear to have independantly
come up with the same solution to this UI problem - colour-coding of
the tab-labels. Unfortunately, they all have chosen a different set of
colours to represent the different states, and a different of states
to be represented by colours - none of which match the GTK theme. For
example, in GnomeICU a tab (even the current tab) with a new message
has its label coloured dark red. In Gnapster, a background tab with an
event has its label coloured pale grey. Galeon has two states - 'new
tab' and 'busy loading tab'.

Also, none of these have added "status icons" to the tabs to make the
states clear for colourblind users. For example, Opera for Windows
adds a large yellow star to the icon of windows that are new, as well
as color-coding their tabs.

I like this UI design, but the various implementations are, well,
inconsistent. The most appropriate way to standardise this, IMHO, is
to have it included in the widget set, or at least gnome-libs. There
should be a system-standard widget that has a defined set of states,
and a defined representation for each state, which includes an
appropriate icon to be displayed. Colours and variations should be
exposed, as always, to the GTK theming mechanism.

Anyone else think this is a good idea?

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