Re: 2.3 Proposed Features

[Paul Coates <Paul Coates ncl ac uk>]

On Thu, 2003-02-06 at 04:45, Mark McLoughlin wrote:
> Hey Jeff,
> 	Here's a list of some of the things I expect to get done in the panel
> for 2.4:
> 
> 	* New toplevel panel widget:
> 	    + No more panel types, just a single panel which you can
> 	      configure to the same effect as the old panel types.
> 	    + Resize the panel to any width by dragging on the edge.
> 	    + Groovy autohide into the corner for edge panels.
> 	    + Move, resize, hide the panel using the keyboard.
> 	    + No shadow at the screen edge to help Fitt's Law
> 	      compliance.
> 	    + Descriptive panel titles/names to aid navigation between
> 	      panels
> 
> 	* Cleanup of the panel's gconf mess. Easier to change the
> 	  default panel setup, sensible panel/applet ids, descriptions
> 	  for all keys etc.
> 	* The panel will respond to gconf notifications.
> 
> 	* Will either expose the idea of panel "profiles" in the UI
> 	  or possibly dump it altogether.
> 
> 	* Applications/Actions menu bar and window menu from the old
> 	  menu panel will be standalone applets.
> 	* Calendar on the clock applet.
> 
> 	There's probably other stuff, but these are the things I'm looking at
> getting done in fairly short order, depending on whether I have the time
> or not of course :-)

Do you have any plans for specific features to allow the panel to be
used as a sidebar like in this longhorn screenshot
http://www.winsupersite.com/images/reviews/lh_alpha_067.gif
I'm thinking of small things as the panel is pretty usable now. For
example, the arrow to show and hide the sidebar in the screenshot, I can
use a drawer in Gnome but the drawer panel opens directly under the
drawer icon so you need to position the icon exactly in the menu panel
so the drawer panel appears to be attached to the edge of the screen.
Instead I use a corner panel with autohide but this is too easy to open
by accident when aiming for application scrollbars. Anything to make
this better would be great. Also having two images to show the state of
the drawer open/closed drawer, up/down arrows, etc. might work better.

I'm interested in this as I've been working on a couple of applets that
would sit in a sidebar (too big to be normal applets but too small to be
full fledged applications) see screen shot
http://xander.ncl.ac.uk/minifile/shot1.png
for an example of my file launcher applet. I can think of lots of small
applications that could be done this way but I don't know how this fits
in with your plans for the panel.

Paul

-- 
Paul Coates <Paul Coates ncl ac uk>
Newcastle University