Re: combo rant

[Paul Pogonyshev <pogonyshev gmx net>]

control H wrote:
> [snip]
>
> > To be fair, I've worked with combo controls from at least 4 different
> > widget sets and they all were horrible.  Win32, GTK, Web, Borland, Java,
> > they all suck.  I think as a control, the combo control is just a bad
> > concept.
>
> I'm not that negative about a combo control. After all, a good combo like
> the Windows one lets me select the item I want quickly and simple (enough),
> and in an acceptable style.

Well, I must admit that I haven't used Windows more than occasionaly for the
last three or four years, but the last time I checked, Windows combo box was
much _worse_ than GTK+'s, in my opinion.  You would often get a five-line
combo where you'd have to scroll like hell to skip all those 200 items to
get to the one you want.

I'm not saying GTK+'s combo is perfect, but I think it is generally better
than anything else I've seen.  At least it always uses all the screen space
it has.

The main problem, to me, is when the combo is too close to the screen edge,
especially to the bottom one.  Then you can easily get a too small popup.

And yes, I agree that a real scroll bar could be helpful.  While you should
avoid presenting the user with a hundreds-items combo box in the first
place, it doesn't mean GTK+ should make such combos even less usable.

Paul