Re: adding dead space to floating panels

[Dave Bordoley <bordoley msu edu>]

On Fri, 2003-01-17 at 17:34, Mark McLoughlin wrote:
> Hi Dave,
> 
> On Sat, 2003-01-18 at 04:06, Dave Bordoley wrote:
> 
> > FWIW, I think floating panels are an "edge" case, which have ui problems
> > by their design. They also expose some of the deeper ui problems with
> > the panel (over configurability). So my general response to this
> > statement is that you don't screw up the ui of all other panels just
> > because one case has problems.
> 
> 	What are these "deeper UI issues" ? Issues don't get fixed or even
> thought about unless you tell us what they are.
> 
> Good Luck,
> Mark.

Hi Mark,

Many of them are well known among the ui team, the most obvious of which
is the dependence of context menus for customization of the panels
(which is why floating panels seem to have problems in this respect). 

Another issues imo includes the existance of too many different types of
panels. I believe Calum had proposed their only being one panel type
which changed behaviors based on where the user positioned it. I'll
probably catch some flack here, but i personally wouldn't mind there
only being one type of panel all together (edge panels). Of course such
a change would probably cause a mass uprising.

Other issues:

Many panel applets really should be included in the system notification
area, these include

1. The clock
2. Wireless link monitor
3. Modem lights (really should just be the equivalent of a minimized
dial-up connection window imho)
4. Volume control
5. Battery monitor

and i'm sure others as well fall into this category. There is precedent
for this in both windows and on the mac.

This post on the usability list covers this topic fairly well:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2002-October/msg00265.html

Than of course there is the elusive user object model that nils and seth
have commented on before. In relation to this i find it strange that it
is not possible to drag a link to file from the panel to the trash can
(yes i do realize that there are implementation details). Furthermore
links on the panel act completely different from the links on the
desktop (they have different context menus, require different clicking
behavior etc.)

Let me make it clear that i am not trying to criticize you or anyone
else. These problems have long existed in gnome (since I first started
using it with 1.2) and in all fairness the 2.x panel is far superior to
the the 1.4 panel in terms of usability.

dave