default desktop layout To: xfce at xfce.org

[Stephan Arts]

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 3:46 PM, Vincent <mailinglists at vinnl.nl> wrote:
>
>
> 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.

Nothing keeping anyone from changing it... I'd prefer to keep it CDE-style.

We already have a problem explaining to people XFCE is NOT a stripped
Gnome. Lets stick to the roots, the FOSS CDE-like DE Olivier
originally had in mind.

The two-panel layout might be sub-optimal, but it is something that
xfce has been identified with for over 10 years. In that time, the
flexibility of xfce has improved and nothing is keeping people from
moving stuff around.

But the default should imho resemble CDE.

My 2ct,
Stephan