veqz wrote:I think the focused and unfocused sidebars look beautiful.

Thanks !

veqz wrote:But I'm still highl skeptical of the scrollbar: I think it is a bad idea to use the same kind of scrollbars on the sidebar and on the content. It looks immediately cluttered and confusing.

To be honest, my take on scrollbars would be that they should look identical everywhere, for consistency to the user.
Now maybe scrollbars are just too fat and in your face everywhere ?
On a different note I do like colormar's idea of using arrow buttons instead of a scrollbar (and in that case all is permitted), but that would be an different widget to be written entirely, (and not such an easy one at it)

ooh and again, having scrollbars in side panels is a corner case (and possibly proof of bad design on the application side: you do not want zillions on sidebar pages in a single app).

Maybe the fact that the scrollbar is fat make the window scream for being resized by the user, and once done, all is good and connected again and everybody is at ease.

The sidebars themselves are fine - especially now that you've made them look good.

But as soon as the scrollbar appears, I, at least, immediately start to wonder if I'm looking at a window with two content areas. I understand that it's a sidebar of course, but there's this instant when I first see it that gives me the association.

I'd prefer if if the scrollbars were more low-key than the scrollbars in the content areas. Perhaps making them thinner, or a less vivid colour?


And of course, since, as you say, these scrollbars are a corner case, I might just be yelling too much about too little this time.

veqz wrote:The sidebars themselves are fine - especially now that you've made them look good.

My bad. I meant "scrollbars" not "sidebars" two comments above (hence confusion)
Just edited the post.

hugo.pereira@free.fr wrote:ooh and again, having scrollbars in side panels is a corner case (and possibly proof of bad design on the application side: you do not want zillions on sidebar pages in a single app).

Maybe the fact that the scrollbar is fat make the window scream for being resized by the user, and once done, all is good and connected again and everybody is at ease.

Fully agree. If a sidebar needs a scrollbar, It's likely that something is wrong with the application design. We should probably put an advice like "do not put more items in the sidebar than fit into the default height of the window" in the HIG somewhere.

hugo.pereira@free.fr wrote:On a different note I do like colormar's idea of using arrow buttons instead of a scrollbar (and in that case all is permitted), but that would be an different widget to be written entirely, (and not such an easy one at it)

Credit where credit is due: Those were kdeuserk's idea, not mine

And I also like sour idea for the sidebar design a lot! It establishes a connection between the selected item and the content without looking too much like tabs, which is great!

Ah! Yes, now it makes more sense!

And yes, when you mention it, I think that at least for me, the scrollbars do seem a bit... intense? Most other scrollbars I've seen have been more subdued. What's especially striking is the very clear blue colour. Could it be possible to replace it with another blueish colour from the colour set? Alternatively, it could be made a bit thinner perhaps.

But I'm still not done with the sidebar: I really think there should be some way of making the sidebar-scrollbars a bit more subdued than the content-scrollbars, even though they should probably be very close in appearance...

colomar wrote:If a sidebar needs a scrollbar, It's likely that something is wrong with the application design. We should probably put an advice like "do not put more items in the sidebar than fit into the default height of the window" in the HIG somewhere.

If we set a standard that scrolllbars in sidebars really shouldn't happen, then I will be quite content, and withdraw all my protests.

veqz wrote:Alternatively, it could be made a bit thinner perhaps.

at some point during the design iterations of the widget style, the scrollbars were quite thin. While that made them look good, the problem was that this made them very hard to click and drag.

Then just Inflate them during hover?

veqz wrote:Then just Inflate them during hover?

Could work, if that's technically feasible. Though that would need a hover area that's bigger than the actual scrollbar, because otherwise one would still have to exactly hit the small scrollbar with the cursor to inflate it.

hugo.pereira@free.fr,

i think all the mockups that you posted are great. I personally don't think that there's any issue with the scrollbars for the sidebar - I think every application that i've ever used has the scrollbars on the right of the content area that they control so i think it's not an issue. See my comments quite a few posts ago for why i really don't like scrollbars that change when you go near them - IMHumbleO they're horrible.

One suggestion and one i think for the scrollbar design & not hugo specifically - It might look good if, when there is a scrollbar in the sidebar and the sidebar looses focus (imagine your plasma-desktopiG2032.png mockup once the focus has shifted to the content area), the colour of the scrollbar, instead of changing to grey to show that it's inactive, it changes to the same pale blue as the selection in the inactive sidebar in your plasma-desktopOj2032.png mockup to prevent the pale blue selection in the sidebar being 'disconnected' from the content.

colomar wrote:If a sidebar needs a scrollbar, It's likely that something is wrong with the application design. We should probably put an advice like "do not put more items in the sidebar than fit into the default height of the window" in the HIG somewhere.

Agreed, and I would keep the simple solution too. But the user may resize the window to an abnormal height. We cannot presume that scrollbars are never shown,

Not sure if it's necessary to change something in the code but in hugo's scrollbar mockup's isn't it possible to move the scrollbar to the left of the sidebar icons?
That way it would maintain the connection with the content are as in the sidebar with no scrollbar...

A left-placed scrollbar might be exactly what we need!

I wonder if it would be possible to restrict the scroll bar height so that is the same as one of the tablets, no matter how many items are in the list. It might make it look slightly better? If it were then possible to make it 'jump' through the items (keeping the scrollbar in line with the tablets) as you scroll it would give it a more unified feeling.

Just a thought anyway.

prosmaninho wrote:Not sure if it's necessary to change something in the code but in hugo's scrollbar mockup's isn't it possible to move the scrollbar to the left of the sidebar icons?
That way it would maintain the connection with the content are as in the sidebar with no scrollbar...

I think that having some widgets with scrollbars on the left and some with scrollbars on the right might just be very very confusing to user
we need some sort of (behavioral) consistency between widgets