David: Regarding your comment about tree like structures:

VLC does it like this:

I like the idea of redesigning the sidebars, my personal favorite in this area is the old(12.x) opera http://i62.tinypic.com/2v9262v.png
Fully customizable + the toggle edge splitter to show/hide the sidebar

EraX: The sidebar of Cantata which should be the inspiration is also fully customizable (see the initial screencast: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-ihXi ... sp=sharing).

I have taken a quick look at the code of the sidebar in Cantata. It seems to be a modified version of "fancytabwidget" used in QtCreator.
In the Cantata source code however it seems to got renamed to "tabWidget", as grepping shows this line:

Code: Select all

gui/mainwindow.ui:         <widget class="FancyTabWidget" name="tabWidget">


A very old version of the fancytabwidgets code seems to be hosted here: http://code.google.com/p/fancytab-widge ... ce/browse/

Monochrome icons are great and everything but they don't work if the icons are drawn from a user-selected theme and the background from a user-selected color scheme.

molecule-eye wrote:Monochrome icons are great and everything but they don't work if the icons are drawn from a user-selected theme and the background from a user-selected color scheme.

this is truth but i think, this change in the future

molecule-eye wrote:Monochrome icons are great and everything but they don't work if the icons are drawn from a user-selected theme and the background from a user-selected color scheme.

Wrong, it does and will work, see the following screen cast I just recorded: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-ihXi ... sp=sharing

(Works for other themes too)

kdeuserk wrote:

molecule-eye wrote:Monochrome icons are great and everything but they don't work if the icons are drawn from a user-selected theme and the background from a user-selected color scheme.

Wrong, it does and will work, see the following screen cast I just recorded: http://ubuntuone.com/6SZb8EyCPVEJKTcRQis9vl

(Works for other themes too)

You forgot the part where I said "user-selected" icons. Yeah, it works if you can keep the icons fixed, but then you risk inconsistency with the user-selected icon theme. So, what's worse?

molecule-eye wrote:You forgot the part where I said "user-selected" icons. Yeah, it works if you can keep the icons fixed, but then you risk inconsistency with the user-selected icon theme. So, what's worse?

What exactly do you understand under "user-selected" icons? Of course the user can always install icon sets that will have contrast problems. The situation now is not different. (For example try to install KFaenza and choose a dark background ). There is no way to prevent users from installing icon themes that will not work very well. So what is your point?
You are talking like "Monochrome icons have the drawback of ..." and state afterwards "But if you change the icon set ...". That is very contradicting, because why is it a problem of monochrome icons if you exchange them by other ones?
Thats like saying "Firefox is not a good Linux browser, because if you exchange it by Internet Explorer it wont work."

If I understand correctly your initial comment never stated anything about user selected icons, it said "... user-selected theme and ... a user-selected color scheme ..."

Apart from that, the icons in Cantata are not "fixed", you can select the oxygen ones as well , as seen in the first screen cast in the beginning.
If the next icon set will feature monochrome icons for that as well, it will not be necessary to ship specific monochrome icons with applications (like Cantata does now), but use the same global naming scheme as always. Only thing to consider is, that both, light and dark version of every icon are available.

I guess what I want to say is that for how things are now, if you change your icon theme, also changes the icons in the programs, if you choose the path of monochrome icons, these should remain permanent, and not influenced by the theme of icons.

lazyit wrote:I guess what I want to say is that for how things are now, if you change your icon theme, also changes the icons in the programs, if you choose the path of monochrome icons, these should remain permanent, and not influenced by the theme of icons.

What benefit should it have, that the user can't change icons anymore?
Only option would be to solve it like Cantata: Allow optionally to use application specific icons, independent from the selected icon pack. This should, however be optional and the applications would have to ship the icons.

kdeuserk wrote:If I understand correctly your initial comment never stated anything about user selected icons, it said "... user-selected theme and ... a user-selected color scheme ..."

Actually it said "icons are drawn from a user-selected theme" so you have to read the whole sentence to see that.

Apart from that, the icons in Cantata are not "fixed", you can select the oxygen ones as well , as seen in the first screen cast in the beginning.
If the next icon set will feature monochrome icons for that as well, it will not be necessary to ship specific monochrome icons with applications (like Cantata does now), but use the same global naming scheme as always. Only thing to consider is, that both, light and dark version of every icon are available.

[/quote]

It was my understanding that oxygen wouldn't have a set of monochrome icons for every conceivable sidebar. Hence the sidebar for some programs would sometimes draw non-monochrome icons from the icon theme. Depending on what those icons are and what the background color is, things may or may NOT work.

molecule-eye: Do we agree: It will work, if carefully implemented?
Why shouldn't it work with non-monochrome icons? Yeah I understand, if the non monochrome icon is mostly blue it might not be visible if the selection color is also blue. But what is the difference to now? This can also happen now. So the issue you are mentioning in not specific to the proposed idea in this thread.

The thing is: The sidebar is not something done by the theme. It is a piece of code that needs to inserted in the source code of the applications. One can also try to fix the icons at the same time, because this area of code will need to be touched.
The proposed sidebar is not generally doable without modifying sources of individual applications.

Some unsorted ideas:

kdeuserk wrote:Actually sidebar is not the right term, but I cannot use the name of the "widget" either...

If you don't like the generic sidebar what's about 'navbar'?

colomar wrote:I think the standard sidebar (I think the term is pretty accurate) works well in configuration dialogs, but not in general application UIs.

I fully agree with Thomas and would suggest to only use a sidebar when it changes the right hand content completely. And consequently a sidebar must not be used when the content is changed just partially.

david_edmundson wrote:Another use-case to consider is kmail and konversation

When you run kontact you get a sidebar of pim apps and right if it the kmail tree, if selected.

Monochrome/Flatness: I hope you will still provide the old school look (BTW: isn't it a question of the theme?)

Heiko,

First of all, I fully agree: the sidebar should only be used when the content on the right changes completely.

This discussion is not about liking/not liking sidebars, it is about improving their design.
One particular idea was, not to use the white space area, visually sunk area, but instead better emphasize the they are part of the application UI.
As David said, something visually sunk should not control something else visually sunk, because that makes the impression of isolation.

So in general,

should look like

in the future.


Davids suggestion was, that the same design concept should apply to tree structures in the UI, so that

should look like

I think this should really be considered, because we there is simply no reason to isolate the sidebar area from the rest of the UI.

The issue with monochrome icons etc. may be solved independently, but that would definitely be the way to go design wise.
The monochrome icons look way better imho and would invert when the item is clicked. This is already implemented in Cantata and could generally be implemented for all KDE Applications, but that will have to be discussed with the devs.

I hope Jens steps up to establish the communication to developers to see what they would be willing to accept.

The icons should definitely be dependent on the color scheme, as shown here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-ihXi ... sp=sharing

kdeuserk wrote:Heiko,

First of all, I fully agree: the sidebar should only be used when the content on the right changes completely.

This discussion is not about liking/not liking sidebars, it is about improving their design.
One particular idea was, not to use the white space area, visually sunk area, but instead better emphasize the they are part of the application UI.
As David said, something visually sunk should not control something else visually sunk, because that makes the impression of isolation.

So in general,

should look like

in the future.


Davids suggestion was, that the same design concept should apply to tree structures in the UI, so that

should look like

I think this should really be considered, because we there is simply no reason to isolate the sidebar area from the rest of the UI.

The issue with monochrome icons etc. may be solved independently, but that would definitely be the way to go design wise.
The monochrome icons look way better imho and would invert when the item is clicked. This is already implemented in Cantata and could generally be implemented for all KDE Applications, but that will have to be discussed with the devs.

I hope Jens steps up to establish the communication to developers to see what they would be willing to accept.

The icons should definitely be dependent on the color scheme, as shown here:

http://ubuntuone.com/6SZb8EyCPVEJKTcRQis9vl

Very good summary, and I DEFINITELY agree with you. I hate the recessed white background sidebars. Takes up extra space, unnecessary container within container, and big bulky scrollbar.

Icons for the sidebar should be a non issue at this point and be dependent on the icon theme (or set to custom if absolutely necessary) for whats being displayed.

The sidebar/sidepanel itself should match the look of the window in coloration, and while I like the highlighted selection, I think a good way to show selected modules would be to maybe show it as lighter (instead of having a blue line around it). Here's (cringeworthy) mockup of what I mean.
http://i.imgur.com/Io14d6t.jpg

or maybe even do the reverse and show the non-selected modules as darker with a shadow and have only the selected module match the coloring of the window (if that makes sense).

Good idea kdeuserk.

P.S. Dolphin's sidepanel does not look bad at all if you got rid of the lines around it and took that as a base.