Re: [Usability]Feedbacks on GNOME 2 panel from Mdk 9.0 beta test

[Daniel Borgmann <daniel liebesgedichte net>]

On Mon, 2002-09-16 at 20:47, Liam R. E. Quin wrote:
> The first thing I did with gnome2 was try to drag the menu panel
> away to the bottom of the screen, and set it to auto-hide; a laptop
> screen doesn't have enough pixles to waste with fixed decorations,
> for me at least.
> 
> I ended up deleting that menu thingy and never did get all of the icons
> back that it had on it.
> 
> On Mon, 2002-09-16 at 12:05, MM wrote:
> > I think it is better to describe it as 
> > 			 Panel preferences
> > edge panel becomes ----> snap panel to window border 
> > floating panel     ----> uncheck snap panel to window border.
> > sliding panel      ----> uncheck use entire desktop width 
> 
> I agree a lot here.  Actually I thought "floating panel" meant
> "always on top of other windows", but your interpretation is
> more likely to be correct.
> 
> You shouldn't have to delete a panl/menubar to change its type, but
> when I asked in #gnome, that was the consensus -- "it's just broken
> as designed".  I know a lot of people like the menubar, I'm not
> saying get rid of it, but it should be possible to drag it
> around to other places on the screen, and to change its type easily.


I agree, too. Removing the different panel types and replacing them with
two simple options does seem to make a lot of sense! Also it would
remove the problem that panels can't be changed into other panel types
right now. 
Not sure what to do about the menu panel. Wasn't the plan to replace it
with a default panel? This would remove all problems but then again it
would look ugly and generic just like every other panel. This is the
problem with generic things. :/ It's hard to make them look good. 
Maybe it would be possible to add a small drop shadow to the Nautilus
root window whenever a panel is at the top? Together with the minor 3D
bevel of every default panel and a slight transparency (will it be
back?), this could look decent and shouldn't be very hard to do.
Don't forget that the panels (besides the desktop icons) are _the_ thing
that people see when they look at "the desktop", so it shouldn't look
plain boring gray. There is also a problem with current panel applets,
they lack consistency and elegance. Some have beveled borders, some
don't, some have different borders, etc. Just choose a dark background
color for the panel and add an inbox monitor, clock and dictionary
lookup to see what I mean. The clock also needs more customization
options and look better by default. I know, I know, someone has to do
it. :) But I guess that it should first made clear if this is officially
wanted or not so people working on it would know that it won't be wasted
efforts.
Sorry that this was quite offtopic and solely about visual appearance. 

Daniel