Subject: Re: Two toolbars; should enable/disable seperately
From: Paul Rohr (paul@abisource.com)
Date: Tue Feb 29 2000 - 00:27:18 CST
At 02:57 AM 2/29/00 +0000, Aaron Lehmann wrote:
>> That's exactly what the toggleable View / Toolbars menus are for. Just
>> pull-right and click and they should come and go as needed. (The behavior
>> would be comparable to the existing View / Rulers menu item.)
>
>Seems like there are options for the same thing in two places. Sounds bad
>to me.
Huh? I'm not sure I get your point. GUIs frequently allow multiple ways
for users to perform the same functionality (menu, toolbar, keybinding,
dialog).
In this case, if you wanted only a *single* way to toggle toolbars on and
off, the most conventional way to do it would be via a View menu (which we
have). The second most conventional would be a right-click menu on the
toolbar itself (which we don't.) Having it show up in a dialog is pretty
rare, unless you allow people to customize those toolbars too (a post-1.0
feature that I'm sure will eventually get added).
>I'm not sure I understand what a tri-state checkbox is. Can you point me
>to a screenshot? I probably have used them before, but just am not
>familiar with the term.
A basic binary checkbox has two states -- checked and unchecked. The
checked state usually is represented by filling the box with an X or a
checkmark. The unchecked state is usually represented by an empty box. If
the control is disabled entirely, the entire control is usually grayed, as
is its background.
A tristate checkbox adds a third state -- indeterminate. In addition to the
preceding states, this "in between" state is usually represented with a
third "in between" look. Recent Win32 versions grey the checkmark in this
state:
abi/shots/wp/win/paragraph2.png
Here's a picture from another implementation:
http://www.mozilla.org/xpfe/neededWidgets.html
>As for toolbar selection, I remember the toolbar selection from Word was
>adequate. I don't usually reccomend Microsoft as a user interface example,
>but from memory they did a good job with selecting what toolbars you want.
>I forget exactly how it was done in word. I think that this does merit
>some UI thought.
Sure. Take another look at Word. It is a pull-right under the View menu.
It's not in the Options dialog at all. However, there is a Customize dialog
with a scrollable list of checkboxes next to the toolbar names. That last
option is probably UI overkill until we support full toolbar customization,
but it's probably what you're remembering.
>I'd like to work on the XP parts. I am very busy right now (homework :(),
>but I'll look at these classes when I have a moment.
Cool. Thanks. It'll be nice to have a fresh eye looking over that code.
>Yes, I am very suprized that you went through the work of designing a
>cross-platform framework but used so much platform-specific code! Simple
>polymorphism can handle this very well, and I will look at the current
>state of the code and see how I can improve it.
I can't speak for Jeff, but it probably seemed easier to him at the time.
All told, we've been so busy congratulating ourselves for keeping platform
code out of the rest of the app that we haven't sweated the < 10K of
platform-specific code in the framework.
Insofar as we rarely have to go back into his framework to change anything,
it hasn't bothered me that much, but for anyone who does go in there, it's
pretty noticeable.
By all means, if you feel the itch to streamline that code, I can't imagine
anyone standing in your way. :-)
Paul
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