[Gambas-user] Sidepanel handles

[Bruce]

On Mon, 2012-05-28 at 19:35 +0200, Benoît Minisini wrote:

> You find the expand handles usable, but not the closing ones. But AFAIK, 
> there are the same size.
> 
Yes, I can now measure that they are the same sizes.  I can also find
the expand handles as long as I know where to look.

> Can you provide me some screenshots and show me exactly what is wrong 
> with that for you?
> 
I haven't been able to get a decent example of the difficulty in
grabbing them.  But today I got two complaints, one from one of my
developers who couldn't get the project tree back after she dragged the
h-split all the way to the left and another from a client who wanted to
know why the (normally hidden) sidebar had been removed from the app.

The second is probably more relevant, when the sidebar is closed there
is no visual clue that it exists, unless you stumble over the handle
area and recognize it for what it is.  

Benoît, what I'm trying to say is, the 5 to 10 pixels for the sidebar
handles weren't really that much of a cost when considered against the
beauty of the control.  I have looked at every Qt app (and quite a few
others) on my system and compared to the way similar features are
implemented using splits, the gambas sidepanel is a beauty.  pcmanfm,
evolution, etc etc, all use a variants of 
a) you can't shrink a visible side panel below a certain minimum
b) or if you do shrink it to nothing, then you have to find some obscure
menu or config to make it visible again. 
c) "snapping" h-splits, for example vlc probably comes closest to gambas
sidebars in the way it accelerates the shrinking/expansion of the
sidebar under a certain width.
But of all those using the h-split in the a) and c) groups they all
leave a reasonable sized visual hint that something is there.

We use sidebars in lot's of apps.  I have included a couple of shots of
one even though they really don't highlight the above.  

In short the visual clue is really important.  I could go and replace
the sidebars in everything with h/v splits but that would be such a
waste.

Could you please, at least, consider making the invisibility and option
on the control.

best regards 
Bruce
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