[Sugar-devel] Initial implementation of toolbars design

[Aleksey Lim]

On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 02:21:40AM +0100, Gary C Martin wrote:
> On 30 Jul 2009, at 20:46, Simon Schampijer wrote:
> 
> >On 07/29/2009 07:03 PM, Gary C Martin wrote:
> >>Sorry if that wasn't clear. Activity icon and stop icon are
> >>essential.
> >>The Activity icon is going to be critical for identifying what
> >>activity
> >>you are in at a glance, especially if the actual title name is hidden
> >>away in a sub toolbar. A downside if we loose the title in the
> >>primary
> >>toolbar is reinforcement of knowing what activity you are in (say you
> >>are copy/pasting between two similar Write documents)...
> >
> >Ok, thanks for the explanation. The differentiation of the running
> >instance of two activities of the same type is a good point. But,
> >does this happen often? I guess many kids will run one activity of
> >each type at a time, and remember performance constraints ;p And
> >one can use the frame to distinguish the activities.
> 
> OK, next nit pick (apologise as it is clearly a design oversight not
> implementation issue).
> 
> Are we suggesting we make all the lovely, really simple, Activities
> (the ones who have managed to avoid tabs and just a "title", "keep",
> "stop", and perhaps sharing) now show a 95% empty top bar (with just
> the activity icon at one end and the stop over at the other). And
> require popping up and potentially adjusting the canvas sizes to fit
> the Activity sub toolbar? Just did a very (very) quick/rough dig
> through.
> 
> Pippy (though we could finally move "run" and "stop" into the toolbar).
> Maze
> IRC
> Chat
> Typing Turtle
> EToys (has title, sharing, keep, stop, and other buttons, )
> Most (all?) of every MaMaMedia (Slider Puzzle, Jigsaw Puzzle, Poll
> builder, Story builder Joke Machine, etc...)
> 
> et al...
> 
> Ideally I'd like to see an activity icon, and its journal title
> appearing, so you have the best chance of knowing 'what' you are
> currently looking at.

yeah, good idea

> OT: Activity icon followed by title makes an activity instance look
> like the Journal entry row it came from, which would be a good
> thing, but I couldn't find a reliable design for that formula.
> 
> >Personally, I see more the issue of naming an activity, since as
> >said in another post I am not really convinced about the naming
> >alert.
> 
> I know what you mean. I did wonder once if a modal activity alert
> style pop-up, below the activity toolbar, would be less intrusive,
> and more in context with the activity than a pop-up dialogue that
> hides most of the Activity context.

btw, why not following common way - auto numbering activity
instances? e.g. "Terminal Activity 1", "Terminal Activity 2" ...

> >One little thing I am a bit worried about, is that we miss labels
> >for the sub-toolbars. I hope the icons are meaningful enough for
> >the users - but then labels can be misleading as well, and many of
> >our users can't possibly read.
> 
> +1
> 
> Extremely good icons are essential or else WE FAIL and walk
> backwards here. :-( At least this is something we can iterate on
> before the 0.86 official release that gets documented and pushed out
> to deployments.
> 
> >About alignment (attached is a snapshot), should we align the
> >'share button' and the 'keep one' to the left that the way to get
> >to this button is not so long, when revealing the toolbar?
> 
> My vote is for no right align. Put those icons (share with, keep)
> left aligned near any other icons (perhaps a tag feature can show
> here in future). My main concern here would be for a child trying to
> drive the mouse all the way over from the far left of the display,
> to the far right to hit a target.
> 
> Regards,
> --Gary
> 

-- 
Aleksey