[josm-dev] Right side panel improvements ...

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

First of all: big thanks to Ulf Lamping, great work, feels much better!

2009/1/9 Dirk Stöcker <openstreetmap at dstoecker.de>

> On Fri, 9 Jan 2009, Ulf Lamping wrote:
>
> > 4) remove the toggle icons for the panels from the toolbar?
>
> Please not. I already added options for hiding. Exposing these options to
> config should be enough. Nowadays with these wide screen displays I prefer
> to have toolbars, so not all users really want these icons to vanish.
>

It is not mainly a problem of not having enough space on the screen, it is
about confusing newbies with hundreds of icons (similar to modes and rarely
needed if you have a starting configuration that meets your needs). I would
suggest to hide the icons as default (when JOSM is installed first time) and
instead add a menu "windows" for them on top (with icons beside the text
like in the other menus, this way the nice icons don't get lost). Maybe this
menu could contain an option to show the icons.

* Instead it would be good to have all right-side-menus visible but
minimized by default, except for the mostly needed, which should be
maximized:
properties
layers
command stack?
selection?

* some could be automatically maximized (and minimized) when relevant:
relations
conflicts



>
> Anway making the side toolbar configurable like the top bar would be nice
> as well :-)
>

sure :)


>
> > P.S: I've thought about implementing resizable panels, but this is a lot
> > more complicated to implement and a PITA if you resize your window size.
>

that's a pity because it forces you on smaller displays to detach (in order
to make them resizable) some important menus (layers), because otherwise no
workflow.

The main problem is, that the current behaviour offers the same space to
each menu, but layers has big icons, so the remaining space is small, where
e.g. authors seem huge, but mostly there is just 1 line needed. The
"measured values" from measure plugin now are seperated by empty lines.
Actually on 2nd sight it seems as if there were big menus and small menus.
Some of the Problems could be solved by making layers a big menu. Even
better it would be, if the size depended on the content (but on the other
hand it would be confusing if all menus changed their size and position on
every select)


> > So I started with a minimize mechanism ...
>
>
> Which looks fine BTW. At least at the first look I had.
>

* yes, it looks very fine indeed. IMHO it is a big step for getting rid of
the icons on left border.

* One Problem I noted for the bold headlines: in relations it showed
"Relations: 7" but opening it, there were just 2.

UlfL:  2) add toggle menu items to View/Panel (someone with a better name?)
Thanks a lot. I wanted to do that myself for half an year, but as I never
programmed and my timebudget was getting smaller and smaller I was still as
far as possible from doing it.
for the name, what about "Menu" or "Window" or "Controls" or "Panels"?
"View/Panel" is not that bad, but for my taste it is a bit long and contains
"/" which seems not too beautiful for a menu-name.

3) think about good defaults for normal / minimized panels


Martin

PS: to illustrate this mail I created a screenshot:
http://www.koppenhoefer.com/osm/Screen_Josm_1229.png

PPS: Dirk: "Please not. I already added options for hiding. Exposing these
options to config should be enough." --> where is this option? I would
expect it in "Display Settings"/"Look and Feel" or "Customize the elements
toolbar" (which is right now just used for the top toolbar, so not the best
place). Maybe I just have an