GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 87027
Far too many panel types
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
The number of panel types currently available is just total crack. As far as I can tell, you could do everything that's currently possible with just two types: - Edge panels - Floating panels, with an option to snap to one edge of the screen (Well okay, and possibly a menu panel-- but hopefully we can get rid of that once the menu applet works better, too.) This way you could easily just have one properties dialog that covered all panel types. Or two if absolutely necessary, one for edge panels and one for floating, but I don't see why that couldn't just be a property of the panel in itself. Then we could just get rid of the abominations that are Corner Panels (which you don't even have to place in a corner, duh) and Sliding Panels (which appear to just be Floating Panels that snap to the edge of the screen), and the equally abominable Properties dialogs that go with them :)
*** Bug 87734 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Actually when I was re-ranting about this today, I realised you probably don't even need two panel types, just one. If you drop it at the edge of the screen it should dock, if you don't it shouldn't :) Everything else you could set up in the Properties dialog.
I concur. In particular, I dislike the menu panel. Not that I don't like getting back the good, old menu-bar at the top - on the contrary, I would say. It just seems to me that having a special case for this withing the panel application breaks a lot with the overall design. Obviously, it should be possible to add (textual) menu bar entries, the window-list menu etc. to *any* panel.
Adding my comments: In relation to the first post: As far as I can tell, you could do everything that's currently possible with just two types: - Menu panels - Floating panels, with an option to snap to the edge of the screen The subtle differences are substantial. If the menu panel can be converted into a panel with a menu applet, all for the better... you got only one panel. Now the email I sent: ALL PANELS SHOULD BE FLOATING This way, you _can_ drag the panel to wherever you want, as it makes sense. There's a few requirements though... * if you drag it to an edge, it should stick to it like a strong magnet. The word strong is there so that a noticeable amount of orthogonal strength becomes necessary to detach the panel from the border (note: I don't mean insane, but strong enough -- long in time -- so it can be deemed intentional -- that way you can drag it to the corners, middle, anywhere, but only when dragging away from the edge it will try detaching) * provide an option to fill the whole edge or use minimum length this would probably require applets to suggest their preferable lengths and/or giving a configurable minimum length for the panel, so I don't know how feasible this is. What do you think?
oops... better yet, cut the option of snapping to the edge, magnetism can do that for you!
*** Bug 105233 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I guess we can close this now that we have the new toplevel stuff in cvs HEAD.