[Sugar-devel] Initial implementation of toolbars design

[Aleksey Lim]

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 11:21:27PM -0400, Eben Eliason wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 9:21 PM, Gary C Martin<gary at garycmartin.com> 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.
> 
> That's an interesting question. I'll have to take a look at some of
> these activities. I actually find it odd that so many wouldn't have
> any use for buttons or other controls. Perhaps a number of them are
> revealing these controls in the canvas below instead of using
> toolbars?
> 
> For what it's worth, I have always found it a bit odd when activities
> embed their own custom controls amidst the cross-activity controls.
> Perhaps we could institute a rule by which the primary toolbar will BE
> the only toolbar (not a toolbar button) if and only if the activity
> adds no toolbar controls at all. If, on the other hand, the activity
> wants their own controls, these would appear in the primary toolbar to
> the right of the activity icon.

At least in case of MamaMedia activities, I guess the purpose was
supporting non-sugar(w/o toolbars) start, but for activities I'm
maintaining I hope to switch them to sugar way in some day.

-- 
Aleksey