default desktop layout To: xfce at xfce.org

[Vincent]

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 7:31 PM, Roel van den Berg <rvdnberg at xs4all.nl>wrote:

> Hello, to add some points to the discussion, since I have spent *a
> lot* of time in getting the most ergonomical setup:
>
> "Stefan Ott" <stefan at ott.net>
> > The first thing I do whenever I install Xfce is to 'merge' the two
> > panels into one at the bottom, mostly because I had to do that on my
> > X41's small screen and now I'm used to it, thus I would welcome such a
> > setting as a new default. I'm completely against vertical panels by
> > default, the reasons have been stated before (scrolling and stuff).
> >
>
> I also merge the two panels into one at the top with 18px height to
> save precious space. OTOH please keep into consideration  that a
> vertical bar is ergonomically easier to reach with the mouse than a
> horizontal one (less muscles to move), but I understand the
> disadvantages when on a *very* low reso (<1024), but isn't that the
> case for lesser and lesser cases since screens come with increasing
> high reso's, eg my native reso on my few-years-old laptop already has
> 1440x900 and my CRT has 1600x1200. On a high resoution, vertical layout
> saves actually space since most sites and document-view apps dont even
> use large vertical margins which is a major inefficiency imho.
> But agreed, another major disadvantage for a vertical bar is that when
> you have xinerama and the bar is vertically positioned at the left of
> the left screen than you must move a huge distance when you are on the
> right screen and vice versa, when the bar is on the right side of the
> left screen than it's difficult to point to when mouse gets clipped to
> the right screen when trying to point at the bar, *not* nice.
> Websites with static width are slowly dying out in favor for
> dynamic-width fluid layouts and firefox/iceweasel/opera etc have
> pagezooming function. Old-fashioned sites that have static width mostly
> are designed for 800 or 1024px width.
>

Static-width websites are anything but dying out. If you design a
fluid-width website then that can quickly get unreadable with very wide
screens, so those at least have to set a maximum width. Still, making a
fixed width website is still easier and thus often opted for.

Plus, width the decline in 800px-wide screens, more and more static websites
are focusing on 1024px, so when you use a vertical panel even in that
resolutions websites will look off.

Furthermore, you're ignoring the upcoming netbooks which mostly do not have
a resolution wider than 1024px, so it really isn't an option.


>
> Morten Juhl-Johansen Z?lde-Fej?r        <morten at technographer.net>
> > I think vertical panels are a bit tricky to work with, because they
> > (particularly the right one) almost always end up too close to the
> >event
> > triggers of the application you are using. So if I have to grab the
> > scroll bar, close a window or some such, I might end up launching
> > something instead. Not good.
> > I find that the concept of utilising the corners like Vincent
> > mentioned
> > is sound.
>
> True, corners are hotspots. True, buttons close to control-widgets are
> not handy.


Hmm, that indeed is a disadvantage of having a panel on top.


> Also keep in mind when using xinerama-setup with two screens
> horizontally next to eachother make it less easier to reach for
> instance the top-right corner when there is a screen right next to it,
> (so the "corner" isn't really a corner, and is even less ease because
> the mouse-cursor gets clipped on the other physsical screen wich can be
> very frustrating whe used a lot in productional use.
>



As I see it now I guess as a default setup, to appeal to most users, perhaps
a single panel, full-width, at the bottom is optimum, though two panels is
also very usable.

Cheers,
-- 
Vincent
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