[Usability]Looking for UI ideas for a gnome IDE

[Duncan Coutts <duncan coutts uklinux net>]

Hi all,

I'm helping with a rewrite of hIDE the IDE for Haskell.

http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/~d99josve/hide/

This time it will have a nice UI, oh yes. :-)

So I'm looking for some ideas for the overall structure of the UI.

One key feature that makes it different from other IDE's I've seen is
that it will integrate much more than just editor pages and a couple
other windows like a project management window (it's completely
extensable using Haskell as the embeded language). There will be
documentation pages, Todo list, build results, search results, call
graphs etc.

I wanted a common way for the user to handle all these pages. I was
thinking of allowing the user to have a mix of top level windows and
pages in a tabbed notebook. So that for example the user may arrange
many editor or html documentation pages to be in a tabbed notebook. But
the todo list or project management page are seperate top level windows
so thay can see that at the same time as the other windows.

Anjuta1 has this kind of scheme (albeit it's mostly for editor pages),
as well as allowing docked windows (which I've never found work well
from a UI perspective).

Now my problem is where do I put the menu toolbar items that are
specific to a particular page? 

I could put them inside the notebook pages, but this seems a bit odd -
I've never seen this done before. 

I could try to put them all in the top window's toolbar and disable /
hide them when they are innapropriate. This does't feel nice either, as
there may be lots and hiding is generally bad UI design. It also doesn't
work well with multiple top level windows as the stuff enabled / visible
would depend on the currently selected window - which is horrible and
highly dependant on the way the WM works.

This wouldn't be so bad if there were only one notebook, ie if there was
only one top level window like in most editors eg gedit, rather in the
Delphi / Kylix style. Kylix uses a separate top level menu / toolbar
window: http://www.drbob42.com/gif/Kylixongnome2full.jpg

So what to do? All suggestions welcome.

BTW if I've not explained myself very well I can post some glade files
or screenshots.

Duncan