Re: [Usability] GTK+ at the UX Hackfest

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

On Tue, 2010-03-02 at 23:55 +0100, Filippo Argiolas wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 1:22 PM, Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net> wrote:
> > On Tue, 2010-03-02 at 13:06 +0100, Filippo Argiolas wrote:
> >> On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 3:57 PM, Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net> wrote:
> >> > Heya,
> >> In Cheese we'd like to have something that I'd call ButtonGroup,
> >> ToggleButtonGroup or RadioButtonGroup, something like a breadcrumb
> >> (see e.g. screenshots at http://audidude.com/?p=27) but without the
> >> breadcrumb logic. Maybe the breadcrumb could be a subclass of
> >> this/these widget/widgets.
> >
> > Breadcrumb is probably more complicated than any of those, to be fair.
> 
> To be fair I don't think you completely got what I was trying to say.
> I cited the breadcrumb because it's usually visually styled as a group
> of buttons (that behave like radios plus some more complicated logic)
> grouped together into a "single big button" that contains several
> ones. If you look at the screenshots in that link I think it's pretty
> clear, I'd like a way to "visually merge" together several buttons
> into a grouping container. Look at this mockup too, it should make it
> clear enough:
> http://people.gnome.org/~fargiolas/toggle-button-mockup.png
> 
> Anyway, I still think that breadcrumb could be a subclass of this
> "button group" (a subclass widget *is* more complicated than the
> widget it subclasses), but maybe I didn't get the whole breadcrumb
> thing.

Right, so it's a theming change, and has nothing to do with the widgets
themselves.

> >> We would use it in the toolbar in the "mode selector"
> >> (gnome.org/~fargiolas/togglegroup.png), currently we use three toggle
> >> buttons related to three radio actions but it would be great to style
> >> them as a single widget.
> >> Anyone else would like a widget like this?
> >
> > Seems to me that this widget would be a sub-class of a RadioButton. It's
> > a toggle button that's part of a RadioButtonGroup.
> 
> Well it's not actually the radio functionality that I really care,
> that's easily implementable. It's more the custom container that can
> be themed to visually merge together several buttons. Once that's
> done, the buttons could behave like simple buttons (probably useless),
> toggle buttons or radio buttons. They would be just the usual buttons
> into a special container probably.

Again, you made it sound like you wanted a new widget when you actually
wanted a group of buttons to *look* like they were related.

> > My guess is that you could probably get this widget added to GTK+, as
> > long as you give a formal explanation as to why you're not using a radio
> > button for this.
> 
> Well, the reason is simple, sexiness. Would you really put radio
> buttons into a toolbar?

"Sexiness" isn't a good enough reason. Why do you use that widget in the
first place? Why not put radio buttons instead? (And this is a
rhetorical question for this list, as I mentioned, put this in bugzilla)

The point is that we want to have a trace with explanations as to why
widgets were added. My 2 last contributions in that space were the
volume button ("A lot of multimedia applications use copy/pasted code to
that effect, it works as a toolbar item, it provides consistent
behaviour and look across applications"), and a spinner widget (for
pretty much the same reasons).

At the end of the day, it could be a theming option you're talking
about, or a new widget (see the discussion between Carlos and Thomas).
For the latter, you'd need more than "it looks good".

> Hope I was more clear this time,
> Cheers,
> 
> Filippo