Tool Side panels

["fzamperini tiscali it" <fzamperini tiscali it>]

Hi,
    I'm trying to add some side panels to an image manipulating 
application; these panels contain some buttons and they should be 
hidden when I no longer need them (no need for fancy sliding animation, 
though): the larger the working area the best.
I temporarily implemented each panel with a frame holding the tool 
widgets (through many other boxes); then the frames are held by a 3 
slots hbox, 2 for the panes and one for the drawingarea; when I want to 
hide a panel I just gtk_widget_hide() the frame.
This approach is a bit sloppy in that I don't know when the window 
manager (BTW I'm developing a windows app) actually hides the widget, 
so that I can only  get the new drawing area size in the expose-event 
handler.
I don't like to have it done there, so I'm asking you: is there 
another way to implement side panes? Or, is there another way to show 
and hide them and have it done at a known time?
Thanks

Federico




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