GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 172132
use the Toolbar Handle box
Last modified: 2006-02-18 08:59:09 UTC
anywhere a toolbar is used the toolbar handle box should also be used. Mahjong already uses it. Black jack doesn't seem to use the toolbar handlebox Sol doesn't seem to use the toolbar handlebox Glines doesn't use a toolbar but I suspect it probably should. (Dont know if the smiley face in Gnome mines can really be considered to be a toolbar) If you do not want handle bars there is an existing mechanism for disabling them, there is even a desktop wide setting. I did some research and this was news to me too. I'm filing this request in various places because I want all the Gnome applications to use this consistently. Thanks in advance See the Gnome Preferences section of your desktop menus, choose Menu and Toolbar Preferences and Uncheck "Detachable Toolbars" I leave it to your discretion but I suggest the gnome-love keyword might be appropriate in this case.
Alan: I do not have a reference for your assertion that "anywhere a toolbar is used the toolbar handle box should also be used." Could you provide any? I do not believe that glines should use a toolbar, the only items that I imagine would even belong in such a thing are "New" and "Fullscreen".
gnome-ui-properties is the name of the application I was referring to earlier, that allows the detachable toolbars to be set. > "anywhere a toolbar is used the toolbar handle box should also be used." I'm working on getting it formalised and included in the Guidelines (bug 172301). I've noticed this annoying inconsistency in the Gnome desktop and some developers have removed the handles entirely from their application (or taken to using weird themes) rather than following the desktop setting which I think is a much better way to go. Perhaps the detachable toolbars setting should be off by default (see bug 172300) but that is a whole other issue, one i should probably bring to the desktop-devel-list over the next few days. My point is that if it can be used it should be used consistently and in a unified way for all of Gnome. I happen to really like Gnome games a whole lot and it is one of the first places I've pointed this out (after having dicussed it extensively on the Usability mailing list). It is not the most important of details but it is part of a bigger picture and I hope you can agree that a consistent Gnome desktop is a worthwhile idea.
I think we should follow the desktop setting. To be honest I had always assumed that the toolbar widget did that automatically (aisleriot and blackjack recently switched from the gnome toolbar widget to the GTK one, that may be the difference). Since I have that preference turned off I never noticed I was wrong. I also disagree with puttin a toolbar in glines. We already have a big stripe at the top dedicated to the score and the preview, another bar is just going to subtract more vertical space and vertical space is what limits the size of the playing area in most cases.
glines: I wasn't suggesting adding a toolbar I meant more that the preview widget should be in a Toolbar (and the scores in the same toolbar or the status bar maybe).
I'd be more inclined to stuff the preview and score into a same-gnome style statusbar... The only problem is, aesthetically, I tried it a few days ago and personally didn't like it, so I've never recommended it. :)
Alan: having recently worked on the layout code for the preview box I can safely say that it is impractical if you also want the objects in the preview to scale along with the objects in the main playing area. This is all strongly coupled to the way GTK does its sizing voodoo. There are ways to do it, but it involves a lot of nasty code.
I understand the preview box is best left alone. Having looked at gnomines and windows minesweeper and also tried to fit gnomines onto a handheld display I am pretty sure it should be using a proper removable toolbar and standard statusbar widget if at all possible.
Having read through the HIG and looked at what other GNOME programs are doing (e.g. nautilus) I'm not going to go to the effort of making the toolbars detachable. They are all hideable via the menu as per HIG recommendation, but the HIG makes no recommendations about detachability. Probably the most significantly objection from a practical point of view is that there is no convenient API with the GTK widgets to make the toolbars detachable on demand. There is gtk_handle_box to do the detaching, but as far as I can tell I would have to add code to watch the gconf key and then move the toolbar widget in and out of the handle_box. I am not reverting back to the libgnomeui toolbar.
Off the top of my head, the only post-libgnomeui-toolbars app that uses the toolbar handlebox is gnobots2. I see no problem with killing it in the name of gnome-games uniformity. Technically, it is also slightly broke. That toolbar uses a hardcoded width when detached of around 300 pixels, so it doesn't work right with high DPI settings. I've since found the fix to that issue, just never got around to putting it in...
I've removed the gnobots handle box in preview-2-13. Disturbingly I had looked through all the games looking for handle boxes and didn't notice it. Hrmph.