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

[Jasper Huijsmans]

Brian J. Tarricone schreef:
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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.
> 

Ok, thanks.

One nice advantage is that with the combined dialog is is again possible 
to have an option for the panel in the settings manager, which will be 
what current users expect.

> 
>>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.
> 

Good idea. I'll do that.

> 
>>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.
> 

Hmm, very true. At least I'll implement that. Most people will use xfwm, 
anyway.

> 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?
> 

Much better indeed. I'll change it.

> 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.
> 

If there are more then 4 it will become a horizontal scroll box ;-)

> 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.
> 

Yeah, I'd love to have a better way to distinguish selected panels. I 
tried using gtk_drag_highlight(), but that's not good enough. Not sure 
about names. It somehow feels like a work-around for the real problem. 
Not that I have a better solution...

> 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.

It already does that ;)

> 
> Ok, I should really do work and stuff.
> 

Thanks,
	Jasper