Re: scrollbar display options

[Drazen Kacar <dave arsdigita com>]

Ronald Bultje wrote:
> On 2001.04.27 19:26:35 +0200 Iain wrote:

> > Users - maybe/yes
> > Programmers - NO!

> I completely disagree here.
> Why would a programmer not have the choice of design what his program would
> look like? In the ideal case, the programmer _can_ let the user decide but
> he _can_ also just choose for one design/look, simply because that looks
> better with the general looks of his application or because that
> design/looks fits the goal of the scrollbar better in his application or
> for whichever reason.

It's a hard problem and even if the programmer tries very hard, the
results don't have to be very good, if the user can use an arbitrary
theme.

I was told that a good design means aligning something with something
else, so that the whole thing doesn't look like a bunch of widgets
randomly dropped on the screen.

Consider a screenshot at http://fly.srk.fer.hr/~dave/gsmix.gif

It's an audio control application, resembling OpenLook audiocontrol utility.
The screenshot uses gtkstep theme.

Notice the balance slider. Just below it there are three indicators, showing
the leftmost position, the central position and the rightmost position of
the slider. Clicking on them (or somewhere near them) would move the
slider to that position.

The problem with this design is that I don't know how the slider widget
looks like. My indicators should be just below the "central" piece of the
slider. But the slider doesn't have to be symmetrical, in which case my
indicators should not be equally distanced from the ends. The theme in use
could have a much smaller or much bigger slider and again my indicators
would be out of place.

The program was tested with the default GTK theme and with the gtkstep
theme. The indicators are correctly placed for those two. I don't know
what to do about other themes. I can't ask a widget about its geometry and
parts, so I can't calculate the positions. I could give the user an
opportunity to specify pixel ranges for this in rc file, but that solution
sucks.

Another possible problem are three buttons on the right. At first they had
equal width, but I didn't like that, so I changed the appearance to the
present situation: the "Mute" button is smaller than the "Pause" and that
one is smaller than the "Channels..." button. In case the application is
translated and the translation for "Mute" takes more space than the
translation for "Pause", I think I wouldn't like the result. The program
can do something about this situation, but it's not trivial in case one
has many buttons and one doesn't want them to have equal size.

What's the point of all this? I think it doesn't matter much how the
scrollbar looks for itself. What matters is how it looks in the
application, ie. with all other widgets around it. And I don't know how to
approach that situation in general, if the look & feel of widgets can be
arbitrarily changed.

Is there a tutorial for UI design with themes in mind?

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