Re: Nautilus sidebar width and more

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Sat, 2007-03-10 at 10:45 +0100, Stefano Teso wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm Stefano Teso, a regular GNOME user: I have been using Nautilus for
> quite some time, and having fun with it; now I'm quite interested in
> contributing patches and trying to fix bugs, altought I'm a newbie to
> GTK+ and UI coding.
> 
> I've posted two wannabe patches to bugzilla [1],[2]; I'm pretty sure
> they won't be accepted, but I'm highly interested getting those two
> reviewed.

[1] - Looks pretty ok, except I don't like the (FALSE ==
open_in_new_window) idiom. Just do if (!foo) or if (foo) if its a
boolean value. Also, it would be nicer if the code for activation was
shared between the menu activation and row_activated_callback instead of
duplicated.

[2] - Got some screenshots to show the difference?

In general we prefer to have patches on the mailing list (sometimes
pointers to bugzilla to avoid having them forgotten). There is just way
to much traffic in bugzilla for people to have time to read it all, so
patches there are easily missed.

> At this point I'm mainly interested in understanding some UI design
> points:
> 
>   * Why is the sidebar completely resizable -- why does it allow for
> smaller than reasonable sidebar sizes? This for instance triggers bug
> [3]. (Perhaps an eel bug?)

Why not? If you limit it to some minimal size you can be certain that
you want to have it slightly smaller at some point. Any bugs caused by
this should be fixed.

>   * Would there be any objections in switching from a ToggleButton to a
> ComboBox implementation for the side panels selection menu in
> nautilus-side-pane.c?

Got any screenshots on how that would look, in various themes?
(Including those with appears-as-list for comboboxes)

>   * I'm primarily interested in catching a selection changed signal from
> within nautilus_window_info_report_selection_changed () to update the
> information sidebar contents accordingly. The problem I'm having is that
> of accessing the information sidebar when I only have a NautilusWindow
> at hand... Would this need complex code refactoring? If so, do you have
> any advice about it?

Why would you need that? The information sidebar can just connect to the
selection_changed signal.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's a genetically engineered zombie paramedic possessed of the uncanny powers 
of an insect. She's a chain-smoking red-headed stripper with the power to see 
death. They fight crime!