Some 4.1.90 usability thoughts

[Erik Harrison]

On Wed, 13 Oct 2004 21:34:09 +0200, Jasper Huijsmans <jasper at xfce.org> wrote:
> Hey Jeff,
> 
> Jeff Franks wrote:
> > I've been using 4.1.90 on Fedora FC3 test 2 for a few weeks and I have a
> > few usability thoughts that might be worth considering, at some stage.
> >
> 
> Hehe, nice careful formulation ;-)
> 
> > 1. It would be user friendly for left handed people to be able to add
> > the pager the to left side of the task bar instead of the right.
> >
> > I'm left handed and I hold the mouse with my left hand. More often than
> > not the mouse cursor comes to a rest on the left side of the screen (the
> > opposite to right handed people). It is a lot easier and more
> > comfortable for a left handed person to move the cursor up the screen to
> > the left side of the task rather than diagonally across the screen to
> > the opposite corner.
> >
> 
> Interesting, Im right-handed, but have my mouse on the left (RSI), but I
> never thought of that ;) Guess I'm so addicted to scrolling on the
> desktop to switch workspaces, I never use the pager.
> 
> Yeah, being able to change the order would be nice. I still think the
> taskbar could use a clock as well.
> 
> >
> > 2. Lil' Star Iconbox would make a good panel plugin.
> >
> > The Iconbox functions similarly to the task bar and would offer users a
> > different desktop experience if they could optionally add the Lil' Star
> > Iconbox to the panel as a plugin, and optionally hide the taskbar. Some
> > people like to (or need to) maximize screen real estate for the
> > application(s) they use so having this optional desktop arrangement
> > might prove beneficial.
> >
> 
> Ah, yeah, the icon box... To be honest the icon box is more or less
> unmaintained and should be replaced with something based on the
> netk_tasklist functions.
> 
> I believe the tasklist plugin on xfce-goodies provides the functionality
> you're looking for.
> 
> I would like to be able to use multiple panel, which would indeed make
> the icon box redundant (provided there is indeed an iconbox plugin for
> the panel). However this requires a serious redesign of the panel and
> therefore will take a bit of time.
> 

And, if the taskbar is made to be just another instence of the panel
widget, then this nicely solves the pager problem.

I'm drolling waiting for this feature. Won't widgetizing the panel
also get rid of the need for the --enable-panel stuff in xffm, since
it'll be part of a shared library? I'd also like to have a floating
panel again, with launchers.

Hey, a man can dream, can't he?

-Erik

> >
> > 3. I've noticed that when Xfce 4.1.90 starts for the 'first' time there
> > is a 10 to12 second delay after the task bar and panel appear before the
> > desktop becomes usable. To the user it seems that the desktop is frozen
> > because it doesn't respond to button clicks on the desktop, menu or
> > panel. On subsquent log offs and log ons (while not rebooting) this
> > doesn't happen. Is this a bug or is there something going on in the
> > background.
> >
> 
> My guess is that this is due to the applications menu being generated.
> I've heard about this, but I have never witnessed it myself. The
> solution is of course to get rid of all the useless crap filling up the
> menus that you never use anyway ;-) Oh, wait, no, solution is to not
> block when generating the menu, but that apparently is not so easy,
> 
> Thanks,
>         Jasper
> 
> 
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-- 
-Erik