Re: GEP 6: Toolbar

[Daniel Egger <degger rz fh-muenchen de>]

On Tue, Sep 17, 2002 at 04:12:03PM +0800, James Henstridge wrote:

> If you try to change you size during size_allocate, or base the 
> requested size based on your previous allocated size, you will get weird 
> results (you might end up with an app window that can only grow larger, 
> or screwed up layout.  It just doesn't work properly with GTK+ (and many 
> other toolkits).

Yes, I stumbled over that problem some time ago myself. 

> I was saying that menu style overflow must be good because the other 
> toolkits do it; I was saying confusion/hassle to users of GTK+ apps 
> acting differently to other familiar systems probably outweighs the 
> possible of doing it differently.

That's certainly a usability issue. Since Apple is known for doing lots of user 
tests I wouldn't mind their style though in this case I really have to say
that this common scheme only works well iff the toolbar can be customized. 

> As far as the case of German menu items, there are a number of ways to 
> fix this including:
>    1. change the translation to use shorter toolbar labels

This is not possible for Joe User. I will file a bugreport about that,
translators are very picky about "their" translation and sometimes
prefer correct translations over a good compromise of correctness and
usability.

>    2. use a different toolbar style, such as "icons only", or the
>       proposed "priority text" style.

You must be kidding. I'm not talking about me having problems with
menus but general usability issues which should be taken seriously.
If some translation (or worse: the original text) doesn't even fit
into my non-standard 1152px wide screen this is definitely a problem
for many users, especially with smaller screens or larger fonts. I
can also imagine that this might be an accessibility issue but obviously
am not the right person to comment on that. 

--
Servus,
       Daniel