[sldev] Roadmap: 1.19.0 Viewer

[Matthew Dowd]

The justification for having a choice between vertical and horizontal tabs for IMs is that whilst some prefer having the tabs horizontal this only really works well if you like the IM window wide but short and say sitting at the top (or bottom) of the SL window. However, then it does have the disadvantage of only allowing a few lines of the IM conversation to be visible (and with the new communicate UI only a few groups or friends visible in the My Friends tab). That aside, many prefer this way of working and for this it makes sense for the IM tabs to be horizontal.

If you prefer the IM window narrow and tall and placed on the side of the SL window, this does allow you to see more of the conversation and the entries in the My Friends tab but doesn't allow you to see many of the IM tabs (which means you might miss the tab flashing due to new messages). In this aspect it makes more sense for the tabs to stack vertically.

So whether tabs stack vertically ot horizontally really depends which aspect of window you prefer working with - and people *will* differ over this preference; neither is "right" or "wrong".

There is precedence - quite a lot of software allows you to choose vertical vs horizontal tabs (e.g. editors with multi-tab UIs for multiple documents).

Where this stalled was that I didn't want this to be yet another checkbox in the already overwhelming preference dialog box (and LL themselves have expressed concerns over adding new preferences here). So my initial thought was to add a little button (analogous to the minimise, and tear off buttons) in the IM window title bar which flipped the aspect of the IM window from wide/short to narrow/tall - basically my thought was that this button would swap the horizontal and vertical dimensions as well as flip the tabs from vert to hor (and vice versa), so that you could easily switch between the two different modes of working.

The sticking point is that the way the tab control has been implemented does not lend itself to dynamically changing the tab aspect after the control has been initialised, and whilst I think I can see how to change this without a complete rewrite of the tab control, it does mean pulling the tab control code apart an re-assembling it, something I haven't had the time to try yet.

Matthew

P.S. this change would also have to incorporate my initial patch to the tab position of Friends and Groups in the My Friends tab from http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1549








----------------------------------------
> Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 11:48:42 -0500
> From: gigstaggart at gmail.com
> To: kamilion at gmail.com
> Subject: Re: [sldev] Roadmap: 1.19.0 Viewer
> CC: sldev at lists.secondlife.com
> 
> Kamilion wrote:
>>> Matthew
>> 
>> Configuration is good. I like the vertical stacks, but it's not
>> something for everyone. 
> 
> No, not really:
> http://www106.pair.com/rhp/free-software-ui.html
> 
> Every configuration option has a non-zero cost.  It's not good enough 
> that someone somewhere might want to change it.  It's better to do the 
> right thing than to add yet another stupid config option.
> 
> -Jason
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