Re: [Evolution] Evolution 2.0 UI proposal

[Brett Johnson <brett fc hp com>]

On Tue, 2003-07-15 at 10:09, Ettore Perazzoli wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-07-10 at 20:09, Brett Johnson wrote:
> > It seems like using tabs might be better from
> > a HIG standpoint though.  Less confusing, as folks generally don't
> > expect a button click to drastically alter the entire view modally (and
> > the tab abstraction is pretty universally understood).
>
> Yeah, it's true that tabs are a more standard UI; however, they are
> smaller (so they are not as easy to click) and they take more vertical
> space in the view.

True.  Tabs along the top of bottom of the view do waste some vertical
space.  Of course currently (in the mockups you sent out), that space is
already being completely wasted with the redundant toolbar-sized "tell
me again which folder I've selected?" bar.  The only useful thing there
is the search widget, which could easily be integrated into the toolbar
instead (especially if evolution would honor the gnome toolbar_style
preference, and not waste valuable toolbar space on redundant text).

However, even putting that argument aside, I don't see any reason why
tabs shouldn't be configurable to be on the top, right, left or bottom,
like they are in every other reasonable tabbed application I've seen. 
In fact, it'd be *really* sweet to take a page out of Galeon's UI
design, and allow tabs to be promoted to full fledged windows (and then
demoted back to tabs) as desired.  Seems like this would be a great
solution for those folks that want to separate the tabs into disparate
applications.  Alternatively, it'd be nice to have an option to not even
display tabs (just have them show up under the view menu with a hot-key
to switch between them or something), for those folks that are really
concerned about screen real-estate.

My $.02,
-- 
Brett Johnson <brett hp com>
   -  i  n  v  e  n  t  -