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So some people dislike the centre panel and want to get rid of it. Personally, I'd love to use the centre panel, but it behaves strangely when resized then music is dragged onto it so I hide it. Currently, you can hide it by dragging the handles of the two side panels together.

This still causes a problem, though: if you want to resize them, say, so the left panel is larger, then you have to accurately click on the handle of the left panel, otherwise the centre panel reveals again.

So I puzzled over a way to make this better: my first thought was a right-click context menu when the panels are dragged together, but this isn't very intuitive: the only option when dragging them together would be, "Merge". The only option when they're merged would be, "Unmerge". This is making the presumption that, if you're right-clicking at all, it's to merge the two handles together.

So I thought of something else: when the two panels are dragged together, merge them automatically. Left-click will resize the two panels, and middle-click would separate the handles again allowing the centre panel to be shown. I thought, to let the user know that the panels are being merged, of using a pop-up dialogue (similar to when you're closing the Amarok window for the first time), but I'm not a fan of these in-your-face dialogues, and since the, "You're closing the Amarok window" dialogue can't exactly be displayed in the Amarok window (It's being closed), it is more suitable then something else.
Instead, what I would use to alert the user that the panels are being merged is the same, small dialogue used when e.g. the Magnatune store has been updated. This would have some text like, "The panels are now merged. Use the middle mouse-button to separate them again." It would display the first time they merge the panels and have a little close button, as well as a 10-15 second time-out, then wouldn't be displayed again.

This, I think, satisfies everyone: resizing the, "traditional" panels no longer requires an accurate click/squinting, and the centre panel is still made available in case people like me want to use it again, or only want to show the lyrics for a song right then, for example.

While your idea is viable, it can be done in Bespin hack of Amarok.
But it's just one theme, so I'll leave it opened.

Heh. Besides, I prefer Oxygen to Bespin.

Why not just a hide/show center-panel in either the tools or settings menu?

Kryten2X4B wrote:Why not just a hide/show center-panel in either the tools or settings menu?

Because then it's hidden in a menu somewhere. Several other apps use the click-and-drag-panel-handles-together scheme (kontact modules, for example), so I think it would be more natural for people to use this method here as well.

Of course, this idea COULD be applied system-wide...

They went and added a Configure Amarok checkbox that will hide the context view. I suppose that solves the problem, but it's not really as 'elegant' as I would like...

What exactly is wrong with the way it is solved now? Simply right click on some free space and check/uncheck the "Context" entry. That's the standard way for show/hide toolbar elements, so it's not that "far away" for the user.
Remember that the middle mouse key is user for pasting under linux, so I don't think it's a good idea to use it for another purpose.

Hmm? Last I checked, it's in Amarok's settings...
I guess with the new, re-arrangeable layout in Amarok 2.2, it'll be easier to remove. Does Amarok use the standard panels in 2.2, like the panels in Dolphin? If so, case closed.

Yep, but you have to unlock the layout from the settings dialog first (at least in the build I have).

Yeah, sorry, I forgot to mentiona that I'm talking about amarok 2.2
In the settings, you just lock/unlock the layout and in the unlocked state you get panels very simillar to those in dolphin. Meaning you can drag them around and you have a small close button to hide them. You can re-enable them as I mentioned via context menu. Oh, and there is this button to seperate the panel from the main menu. Additionaly: If you drag one panel over another, they got tabbed, so you can set up the layout as in amarok 1.

Cool! I guess this is kinda implemented then. Better then my idea was, anyway.