Panel Autohide

[Olivier Fourdan]

Hi all,

I agree on the panel autohide feature. It should hide to the top, left,
right or bottom depending on screen location and panel.

Cheers,
Olivier.
 
On Tue, 2003-03-18 at 20:39, Jasper Huijsmans wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Mar 2003 09:28:59 -0600 (GMT)
> Erik Touve <etouve at earthlink.net> wrote:
> 
> > I had trouble posting this earlier....
> > 
> > > Autohide in the same way as the taskbar is out of the question for
> > > the panel. The panel is based on an entirely different design, most
> > > importantly it is freely moveable around the screen; autohide only
> > > works on a panel that is always on the edge.
> >  
> > Ok.  Shouldn't be a huge problem here.  I should be able to test for
> > location... x == 0 or x == SCREEN_WIDTH.... y ==0 or y ==
> > SCREEN_HEIGHT
> >  
> 
> Well, almost (x == screen_with - panel_width) ;-), but I really don't
> like special casing of such an important feature. Image this in the
> settings dialog: 
> 
> [ ] Autohide, but only when the panel is on one of the screen edges
> 
> :-)
> 
> > >
> > > The only autohide behaviour that I can think of for a the xfce panel
> > > is to 'collapse' the contents to only show one or two move handles.
> > > I'm not sure if this is useful and/or desirable, but I wouldn't be
> > > against it on principle.
> > >
> >  
> > Are the handles the far left and far right
> > dotted area on the panel?  I'm not sure what this would solve by
> > making this like a 'kicker' in Gnome.  The problem I want to solve is
> > not giving up my real estate...  most importantly if I have a maxed
> > app. (currently have to set up margins if panel is at the bottom).
> >  
> 
> Well, you could have this small button on top of everything, expanding
> to the full panel on mouse over, but as I said, I don't know if this
> would work.
> 
> BTW, you can quickly get the panel back by middle-clicking on the
> maximized window's title bar, to send it to the background. This only
> works with panel layer set to normal. Not very intuitive perhaps.
> 
> > I've seen a previous post (Feb.) about the problem that the panel
> > autohide would be compilcated due to it not being the entire
> > width/height of the screen. That hiding the panel wouldn't work
> > properly.  Can't I just show the panel when moused over the hidden
> > panel area?  Does it really need to be activated when you move
> > anywhere along the border of the screen?  
> 
> I don't recall this, and I certainly don't think that it is required.
> 
> >  
> > I'm sure there are some usability issues with something like this. 
> > I'll see what the 'Human Interface Guidelines' are.  I believe they
> > can be found somewhere on the Gnome site.
> > 
> 
> They call the behaviour of the xfce panel a floating panel, I think. Do
> you know if they allow autohiding for floating panels? 
> 
> > > On an implementation note, the logic of hiding is complicated by the
> > > fact that subpanels are separate windows, so the panel will lose
> > > focus when you are accessing a subpanel, but obviously it shouldn't
> > > hide.
> > >
> >  
> > Here I think I could trigger a flag for 'entering' a menu.  Don't hide
> > until you're done.  Currently you can't escape a submenu.  I think you
> > need to click on the activator to close a menu if you don't make a
> > selection.  This would signal the exit and allow autohide if not
> > moused over.  I need to think about keyboard input.
> >  
> 
> This was just a comment on your statement that the logic in xftaskbar
> looked simple. I agree we should be able to solve this without too
> much effort ;-)
> 
> > I'm not trying to 'force' bad design or introduce something that
> > the group doesn't want/need.  I feel that the autohide function is
> > really needed. Most users feel very comfortable with the way autohide
> > works on other OSes and WMs.  Sure this panel is a bit different in
> > that it doesn't stretch full width/height. If it did, I would surely
> > expect it to have autohide functionality - most users would expect it.
> >  Currently I feel that the panel is nice, useful, but at times it gets
> >  in the
> > way (setting margins takes up a lot of space, setting zorder below app
> > makes it hard to get back to).
> >  
> > I'd like to work on the problem without upsetting anyone here.  Maybe
> > I can find a good way to do this.
> >  
> 
> The problem is not the width of the panel, it's the free movement. You
> can't be sure of the location of the panel.
> 
> I do see the problem you are trying to solve, I'm just not sure what is
> the best way to solve it, yet. Your ideas are very much appreciated
> (look at my answer to Joakim's post for some more ideas I had).
> 
> Thanks,
> 	Jasper
> 
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-- 
Olivier Fourdan <fourdan at xfce.org>
http://www.xfce.org