Re: Change autohide panel default settings ?

[Dylan McCall]

> I suggest 3 change to the default gconf settings:
> 
>   * The unhide_delay is way too slow. For the sake of responsiveness, it 
> should be immediate. I suggest a delay of 0.
> 
>   * Even when unhide_delay is set to 0, the rather slow speed of the 
> animation effect (about 0.5s) still makes it rather unresponsive. I 
> suggest to set enable_animation to 0, unless it is possible to speed it 
> up (not in gconf apparently).
> 
>* The auto_hide_size default of 6 pixels gives the impression that 
> the panel is stuck half way on its move out of the screen. A small part 
> of the applets and icons are still visible, but unrecognizable. IMO the 
> expected behavior of an autohide feature is that the panel completely 
> disappears, or only draws a line on the border of the screen. My 
> suggestion: 0px or 1px. (which actually behave the same, the panel does 
> not completely hide when set to 0)

I agree completely, Ric! These are almost the same settings I use, too.
One issue is that the hidden panel is almost completely invisible this
way, save for a very slight line, which does hurt discoverability.

It would be kind of cool if a little arrow (placed always below instead
of always on top) appeared in the panel's place. This way, if someone is
just logging in, he is led to the hidden panels fairly easily from his
desktop. I have had a few users become very confused when using my
computer via my user account. (Actually, why doesn't the panel just
lower to the bottom of the stack and rise to the foreground when the
mouse hits the edge of the screen anyway?).
Another possibility would be for the applets to be hidden when the panel
is hidden, which would solve the ugliness we presently see from them
being cut off.

Of course, those ideas are a bit off topic; this is just a configuration
change. On that discussion, I should point out that animation
speed /can/ be changed, though the values are rather odd. It's the
animation_speed key for your selected toplevel, where you have the
choice of "slow", "medium" or "fast". Default is "medium".

Bye,
-Dylan


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Re: Change autohide panel default settings ?

[Vincent Untz]

Le lundi 02 juin 2008, à 11:36 +0200, Sebastien Bacher a écrit :
> Vincent, what do you think about doing such changes?

I think I agreed with most of the changes some time ago already. Please
open an upstream bug or ping me on irc this month so that I change this
upstream.

Vincent

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Re: Change autohide panel default settings ?

[Sebastien Bacher]

Hi,

Le vendredi 30 mai 2008 à 18:00 -0500, Ric Flomag a écrit :

> I suggest 3 change to the default gconf settings:
> 
>   * The unhide_delay is way too slow. For the sake of responsiveness, it 
> should be immediate. I suggest a delay of 0.
> 
>   * Even when unhide_delay is set to 0, the rather slow speed of the 
> animation effect (about 0.5s) still makes it rather unresponsive. 

Not sure about those, upstream might be using those values for a reason,
I would prefer to have the discussion happening upstream rather in a
distribution specific level, I would be in favor or a slightly lower
delay there too


> I suggest to set enable_animation to 0, unless it is possible to speed it 
> up (not in gconf apparently).

I tried changing those I think the animation make things look much
smoother and nicer, I'm against this change, the sliding is quick enough
when the delay is set to 0 and the animation doesn't go in the way


>* The auto_hide_size default of 6 pixels gives the impression that 
> the panel is stuck half way on its move out of the screen. A small part 
> of the applets and icons are still visible, but unrecognizable. IMO the 
> expected behavior of an autohide feature is that the panel completely 
> disappears, or only draws a line on the border of the screen. My 
> suggestion: 0px or 1px. (which actually behave the same, the panel does 
> not completely hide when set to 0)

agreed that the current behaviour is weird, 1 pixel looks alright


Vincent, what do you think about doing such changes?

Sebastien Bacher



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Re: Change autohide panel default settings ?

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Hash: SHA1

Martin Pitt wrote on 02/06/08 08:03:
> 
> Ric Flomag [2008-05-30 18:00 -0500]:
>> 
>> As Greg Grossmeier  
>> suggested on the last comment, i'm posting here to discuss the matter of 
>> autohide panel default settings, which imho could be much better.
> 
> I'm not an UI/usability expert, but I actually quite like the current
> defaults. Since I know my panel, I know where everything is, so I can
> perfectly tell apart the Firefox from the Devhelp icon. So I can
> quickly click on the devhelp icon without the panel unfolding and
> folding again. The unhide delay could be a bit faster, though.
> 
> But the way you propose it might be a bit more obvious indeed. I'll
> leave that to the usability gurus (hi Matthew :) ).
>...

I don't use autohide, but I've just tried it, and I agree with
everything Ric said. It's painfully slow, and the "hidden" state looks
like a bug, like it tried to hide itself and got stuck part way.

A related problem is that if I click a menu in the panel (or something
that behaves like a menu, like the volume, brightness, or clock applets)
before the panel has finished sliding into place, the thing I just
clicked ends up sliding under the thing I opened. This also looks like a
bug.

Cheers
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Re: Change autohide panel default settings ?

[Martin Pitt]

Ric Flomag [2008-05-30 18:00 -0500]:
> As Greg Grossmeier  
> suggested on the last comment, i'm posting here to discuss the matter of 
> autohide panel default settings, which imho could be much better.

I'm not an UI/usability expert, but I actually quite like the current
defaults. Since I know my panel, I know where everything is, so I can
perfectly tell apart the Firefox from the Devhelp icon. So I can
quickly click on the devhelp icon without the panel unfolding and
folding again. The unhide delay could be a bit faster, though.

But the way you propose it might be a bit more obvious indeed. I'll
leave that to the usability gurus (hi Matthew :) ).

Whatever is decided, it should either be "lower part still visible and
unhide delay" or "invisible and no unhide delay".

Martin

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Change autohide panel default settings ?

[Ric Flomag]

Hi all,

This bug classified as "wishlist" draw mi attention as i was looking for 
a way to configure my Gnome panel:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-panel/+bug/217985

As Greg Grossmeier  
suggested on the last comment, i'm posting here to discuss the matter of 
autohide panel default settings, which imho could be much better.

I suggest 3 change to the default gconf settings:

  * The unhide_delay is way too slow. For the sake of responsiveness, it 
should be immediate. I suggest a delay of 0.

  * Even when unhide_delay is set to 0, the rather slow speed of the 
animation effect (about 0.5s) still makes it rather unresponsive. I 
suggest to set enable_animation to 0, unless it is possible to speed it 
up (not in gconf apparently).

   * The auto_hide_size default of 6 pixels gives the impression that 
the panel is stuck half way on its move out of the screen. A small part 
of the applets and icons are still visible, but unrecognizable. IMO the 
expected behavior of an autohide feature is that the panel completely 
disappears, or only draws a line on the border of the screen. My 
suggestion: 0px or 1px. (which actually behave the same, the panel does 
not completely hide when set to 0)


Rationale:

 * Before: Ric wants to configure his desktop so the panels auto hide. 
He selects the "Hide automatically" option. Unfortunately, the 
half-hidden panel looks weird, and there is a unbearable delay when he 
wants to click on the main menu or unminimize a window from the windows 
list. He deactivates autohide. 3 years later he discovers by chance that 
he could configure autohide with gconf.

  * After: Ric2 wants to configure his desktop so the panels auto hide. 
He selects the "Hide automatically" option and feels more productive 
ever after.


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