Re: Bonobo requires a new toolbar widget.

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs eazel com>]

Martijn van Beers <martijn@earthling.net> writes:

> On Sat, Jan 29, 2000 at 10:25:41PM -0500, Nat Friedman wrote:
> >     2. It needs to handle the situation where there is not enough
> >        window space to display all the toolbar children.  Whether this 
> >        is by using the combo box trick or something else, we need a
> >        solution to this problem.  Andersca's coolbar code might be
> >        usable here.
> 
> I think this is a really bad idea. It suffers the same problems as having
> a notebook with scrolling tabs. Toolbars are supposed to provide
> quick access to often-used features, so you don't have to navigate the
> menus for them. So, yes. having the toolbar be too big is a problem.
> Solving it by hiding the items somewhere else is not the solution though.
> 
> If your toolbar is too big for your window, it simply means your UI
> design isn't all that great, and you better rethink some of it.

As other people have mentioned, this problem can't really be avoided
in general, especially when dealing with toolbar merging.

I'm not convinced the menu at the end solution is very good UI. Here
are some alternate suggestions for dicsussion:

1) If there are widgets past the end of the toolbar, add a thin scroll
   arrow button to each end boyond which there are more controls. This
   preserves button proximity and may allow the user to scroll to
   different comfortable working sets.

2) If overflow is going to happen, start a new, separately dockable
   toolbar below the overflowing one to hold the extra widgets.

3) If overflow is going to happen, add another row to the same toolbar
   to hold the extra widgets.


I personally like #3 best, because it mostly preserves proximity,
keeps all controls (which are supposed to be shortcuts after all)
visible and immediately accessible, and keeps all controls originally
on the same toolbar together if it is undocked or docked elsewhere.

 - Maciej