[Sugar-devel] Home view activities layout

[Gary Martin]

On 30 Jul 2010, at 02:00, Chris Ball <cjb at laptop.org> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
>> On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 03:57:35PM -0400, Walter Bender wrote:
>>> See http://en.flossmanuals.net/Sugar/ModifyingSugar (towards the
>>> bottom of the page).
> 
>> +1 on the spiral.
> 
> I like it too.  I'm worried that it would scale badly, but Walter
> suggested just tightening the spiral, and that sounds good to me.
> 
> Is anyone on the Design Team reading?

+1, have cc'ed Eben and Christian incase they miss this thread.

> What would it take to move
> forward with (a) including spiral, and (b) making it default?
> Should we ask for input from deployments, too?
> 
> Also, how would people feel about a patch that:
>  * allows drag and drop when in a non-freeform view
>  * if an icon is moved while in a non-freeform view, the current
>    layout switches to freeform, and the position of all the
>    activities is saved as the base for the new freeform
>    configuration.

That sounds reasonable as well. The auto-mode change to freeform layout when dragging could be easily triggered accidentally when clicking, so that might want to only fire once an icon is dragged over a certain number of pixels. The visual change of the layout toolbar icon, as the switch happens, will provide help some additional visual feedback.

FWIW: Eben's original proposal (if I remember correctly) for dragging in the home view was to snap the icon to the nearest point on the fixed layout path and reflow the others to make space. Allowing organisation within the confines of the current layout. 

Regards,
--Gary

> (So, going to spiral, dragging one icon out of place would enable
> freeform -- overwriting any previous freeform configuration -- then
> going back to spiral using the layout menu would put all icons in
> their spiral place, then manually going back to freeform using the
> menu would restore you to spiral with the one activity you moved
> back in the place you moved it to.  Hope that made sense.)
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> - Chris.
> -- 
> Chris Ball   <cjb at laptop.org>
> One Laptop Per Child
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