Customize Panels dialog (Was: Re: panel item remove confirmation)

[Brian J. Tarricone]

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On 10/20/2005 6:15 AM, Jasper Huijsmans wrote:
> 
> Alright, what do you think about these screenshots:
> 
> http://xfce.loculus.nl/files/customize-panel-1.png
> 
> http://xfce.loculus.nl/files/customize-panel-2.png
> 
> The second tab looks cluttered, so I'm open for suggestions. The first 
> tab still has a treeview, but could easily be changed to something more 
> like the firefox dialog, with icons in a grid.

I like it.  I don't think the 2nd tab is too cluttered.  All of those
options (except perhaps transparency) are essential to configuring each
panel.

> In this case the right-click menu can be reduced to two items:
> 
>    <plugin name> Properties
>    Customize Panel
> 
> I do like that ;-)

Damn straight...  Random comment: if a plugin adds menu items, perhaps do:

<plugin name> Properties>
[added menu item]
- ---------------------
Customize Panel

... in order to separate them better and make it clear that the
plugin-added items are specific to the plugin.  You may have already had
this in mind, but I just thought I'd bring it up.

> This thread isn't ready to die just yet...

Nope, but we're definitely making progress.

A couple random things that come to mind, that aren't necessarily
related to all this stuff.  Maybe I should start a new thread, but whatever.

1.  Transparency:  This is going to cause a LOT of confusion for people
who don't have XComposite enabled and a compositor running (i.e., the
vast majority of people).  The number of duplicates I can see going into
Bugzilla and the amount of repeated questions on the ML make me want to
preemptively cry.  No, people aren't going to read the docs.  No, people
aren't going to read the FAQ.  We can detect the presence of XComposite
at runtime, but detecting a running compositor is much much harder.  I
believe there was some talk on the XDG list about providing a way to do
this, but the discussion died.  Er, wait, actually, I think it was about
putting a selection atom on the root window, which Olivier implemented.
 Not sure if metacity or xcompmgr implemented it too.

2.  The "Handle Style" wording is a bit awkward.  Perhaps change the
options to "Left/Top", "Right/Bottom", "Both".  Or be even smarter about
it: check the orientation, and use Left/Right or Top/Bottom in the combo
box depending on whether horiz/vert is selected.  Actually, that's the
most usable one right there.  Maybe it should be "Handle Position" instead?

3.  Monitor: I like the visual style of the buttons, but if there are
more than 4 monitors, the dialog starts to get ugly.  Though that's
probably a minority case, and designing for the minority is relatively
dumb.  Leaving this here in case you want to think about it for other
reasons.

4.  Panel names: This is a little useless, but maybe make it possible to
name each panel?  I first thought about this when I went to remove a
panel, and it said something like "Are you sure you want to remove panel
'2'?"  I was like, "that sounds silly".  Some people might like to name
one of their panels "taskbar" or something.  At least it'll make it more
clear which is which, rather than just having to remember which one was
created first, second, etc.  People with multiple monitors will probably
appreciate this more.

5.  You might already have this in mind, but maybe set up the 2nd tab
so, if say you opened the dialog by right-clicking on panel 3, then
panel 3 should be pre-selected.

Ok, I should really do work and stuff.

	-b

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