[Usability]Floating/sliding/other-crack-ridden panels problem

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

Okay, I've been reluctant to start a discussion on this because I
suspect it'll be a hot potato :)  But feast your eyes on this one:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=82642

The problem is simple enough: if you turn off your hide buttons on a
floating panel or one of its variants, unless you know the keyboard
trick to open the properties dialog to get them back you're left with a
panel that you can't easily move, delete, or add things to.

When this bug was originally filed I didn't think much of it, because
the hide buttons are turned on by default for floating panels anyway,
and I was hoping that people only turned them off if they knew what they
were doing :)  But I've been amazed how many people have run into it, so
I guess a lot of people don't like hide buttons, which is a useful
observation in itself...

The report contains a few possible solutions that we knocked around the
block a few times, but we can't really settle on one.  So if you care
about how your panels look and behave, please take a look and tell us
what you think.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems