Re: [Usability] Re: Nautilus Toolbar customization

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Mon, 18 Oct 2004, Iain * wrote:

> Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 01:02:00 +0100
> From: Iain * <iaingnome gmail com>
> To: Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>
> Cc: usability gnome org
> Subject: Re: [Usability] Re: Nautilus Toolbar customization
>
> > > This would be great (and consistent). I'm not sure
> > > why the gnome developers didn't figure this out yet.
> >
> > It is rarely a question of figuring it out.
> > Most likely it is because no one has considered the work important enough
> > to do it, I expect there are far more developers working on end user
> > applications than there are developers working on pushing improvements in
> > the toolkit that will benifit all GTK applications.
>
> Actually, its a much harder problem than at first appears, especially
> when you start using Bonobo UI merging, which is probably why it
> hasn't been done yet. I know Jody was thinking about how it would be
> done a long time ago.
>
> As for applications that are simply using GtkUIManager stuff, then
> yes, they should all be using the libegg toolbar editor, cos its
> pretty cool. Then maybe we'll be able to get some more usability fixes
> in it.

If it is still in libegg they probably shouldn't be using it but (I know
what you meant and) the sooner it gets moved from libegg to GTK proper the
better.

I'm not sure when if at all Bonobo UI merging is a good idea.
Having menu items appear and dissappear is horribly disconcerting, and it
is much better to instead have greyed out menu items where possible (and
applications with a clear purpose so that you dont want to show and hide
lots of menu items in different contexts).

Sincerely

Alan Horkan
http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/