Re: [HIG] User interface suggestion for panels

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

On Wed, 2002-02-27 at 14:02, William McVey wrote:
> First, I'd like to say that I'm very happy with the panel's current
> functionality and usability; however, I think there are a couple
> things that could make it even better.  Last night I stumbled across
> http://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html, which gives a good
> description of various user interface problems with the Apple Dock.
> It occurred to me that a couple of the noted deficiencies in the Dock
> also exist in the Gnome panel.  In particular:
> 
> 9.  Dock objects have no labels 
> 
> This can be an issue when a user has a panel full of similar launchers
> (for example, to launch remote connections to various hosts),
> multiple menus or multiple drawers.  The issue is also very apparent
> when monitoring applets are in use, since it can be very difficult to
> distinguish the various resources being monitored (Load, Swap, Network
> Traffic, etc) since the applets all look similar.  It might be nice to
> add a panel option to allow the user to specify a small text description
> printed near the panel icon.
> 
> 4.  The Dock ignores Fitts's Law  
> (Fitt's law is described at 
> http://www.asktog.com/basics/firstPrinciples.html#fitts's%20law)
> 
> Even when the panel has been configured to:
>     -	not have hide buttons,
> 
>     -	to make the buttons flush with the panel edge, and
> 
>     -	to have 0 padding between the applets and the panel border
> 
> there still seems to be a 1 or 2 pixel gap between the very far
> edge of the screen and the buttons within a panel.  This is apparent
> when you "throw the mouse to the corner", and even though it might
> look as if the you're on a launcher, the mouse is actually in a
> no-mans land (perhaps it's the beveled edge that is insensitive?).
> It would seem that making this area active to button presses
> would speed things up quite a bit (this is covered in detail at
> http://www.asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html).

Hrm, we need a general method for applets to expand their event areas to
the edge of the panel... Is this possible? Or maybe we could do it for
all applets by default (at least to the edge, if not the corner)? I can
think of a number of applets where it would be useful...

-Seth