kdeuserk wrote:Do we really need that expand button for closing the popup? It's quite useless imho, since clicking on the selected object again should undo the selection. Keep in mind: The "expander" was in the 4.X series only intended to show/hide hidden items.

yes, is exactly what's still intended for, not going to change

kdeuserk wrote:Clicking again on the selected item / somewhere else is also intuitive, so I think this should not be the purpose of the expander.
colomar, what do you think?

clicking exactly in the same place to undo the action is intuitive, rotating between 3 states isn't, it simply makes the action of the button unpredictable

notmart wrote:clicking exactly in the same place to undo the action is intuitive, rotating between 3 states isn't, it simply makes the action of the button unpredictable

That's why I suggested to keep the two state arrow, but drop the "close popup" functionality.
But I very much respect your opinion if you say it has to be like that I'll accept that.

colomar wrote:Maybe we should put the "back" button in the popup after all, but come up with a layout that allows us to show or hide the back button without influencing the rest?

Could be at the right, after the title (so semantically becomes "Applet title" followed by a "More"

kdeuserk wrote:EDIT 2: Another point I would like to add: In nomart's screenshot the whole systray area was underlined blue, but imho it should only be arrow or nothing.

yeah, makes sense just under the arrow

kdeuserk wrote:

ken300 wrote:

Just for clarification how I understand this: when clicking the arrow in picture 3 you would return back to picture 2 (even when you clicked a few other active items), this is how it was meant Ken, right? So the "Back" button is static right? The "clickable arrow" part confused me a little, because it sounded like it should act like a button.

No, the intention was for the behaviour to be (starting from the S&N pane not being visible):
1 - If you want to see a hidden icon then click on the upwards pointing arrow in the System tray to show the 'page' with the list of hidden icons on it (the arrow changes to the downward pointing one to close the pane as it does now)

2 - Click on the one of the icons in the list (in my mockup 'Battery & Brightness') to display that icons content in the S&N pane (the arrow rotates sideways to become 'go back')

3 - To get back to the list of hidden icons again you click the arrow in the tray that is now pointing left - you're taken back to the hidden icon list and the arrow in the tray changes again to the downward pointing arrow that it became in step 1

Clicking on one of the visible tray icons would make the arrow revert to it's upward pointing state before it had been clicked.

colomar wrote:a) Users may fail to notice that the function of the expander has changed (I guess this is the downside you mentioned

This might work OK - whenever i'm faced with a computer not doing what i want i try the 'turn it off then on again' approach - kind of. If I was in the 'Battery & Brightness' page and you want to get back to the full list of hidden icons i wouldn't be rebooting the computer (that would be stupid!) but i would think 'i don't know how to get back, i'll try closing the S&N pane & re-open it by clicking on the hidden icon arrow in the tray all over again'. When i go down to the tray and click on the arrow (not really noticing that it's been rotated to mean 'back') & click on it, i go back to the hidden icons list and realise that 'oh that's how it works'. To ME that seems pretty intuitive but everyone's different

I posted this idea not because i think it's fantastic in every way but in case there were elements of it that were useful - ideally I'd still prefer a more obvious 'back' button on the S&N pane itself if it can be made to work OK.

ken300 wrote:I posted this idea not because i think it's fantastic in every way but in case there were elements of it that were useful - ideally I'd still prefer a more obvious 'back' button on the S&N pane itself if it can be made to work OK.

Sure, I'm completely with you here: If we cannot find a good layout with a button on the pane, your idea is a viable "Plan B".

Just been playing with testing the latest Neon 5 ISO & noticed this little issue that's related to this thread:

When the S&N pane isn't visible above the System tray because none of the tray icons have been clicked and you:
1 - click on a visible System tray icon - the S&N pane pops up as expected
2 - click on the 'Hidden icons' expander/arrow (that's pointing upwards) - the S&N pane pops up as expected

All good so far

BUT if the S&N pane is already open and one of the other visible tray icons is clicked, the S&N pane changes to the content of whatever icon has been clicked as you'd expect. However if the S&N pane is open & you click on the 'Hidden icons' expander (that's now pointing downwards because the pane's open - see the screenshot below), then rather than switching to the 'Hidden icons' pane, it closes the S&N pane and you need to click the arrow again to reopen it & show the hidden icons.



IMHumbleO, the behaviour of the hidden icons expander in the System tray should change so that it behaves consistently with the other tray icons, ie:

Click on any of the visible tray icons and the S&N pane opens to show that content but the 'Hidden icons' arrow continues to point upwards - if you then click on the arrow it will NOT close the S&N pane but will instead switch to the hidden icons page - then the arrow rotates to point downwards so that clicking it will close the pane. The 'Hidden icons' arrow only rotates to point downwards when the 'Hidden icons' pane is displayed, when any other S&N pane is displayed it reverts to pointing upwards again.

ken300 wrote:BUT if the S&N pane is already open and one of the other visible tray icons is clicked, the S&N pane changes to the content of whatever icon has been clicked as you'd expect. However if the S&N pane is open & you click on the 'Hidden icons' expander (that's now pointing downwards because the pane's open - see the screenshot below), then rather than switching to the 'Hidden icons' pane, it closes the S&N pane and you need to click the arrow again to reopen it & show the hidden icons.

IMHumbleO, the behaviour of the hidden icons expander in the System tray should change so that it behaves consistently with the other tray icons, ie:

Click on any of the visible tray icons and the S&N pane opens to show that content but the 'Hidden icons' arrow continues to point upwards - if you then click on the arrow it will NOT close the S&N pane but will instead switch to the hidden icons page - then the arrow rotates to point downwards so that clicking it will close the pane. The 'Hidden icons' arrow only rotates to point downwards when the 'Hidden icons' pane is displayed, when any other S&N pane is displayed it reverts to pointing upwards again.

Well, this sounds more accidental than deliberate to me, so I'd suggest just filing a bug report.

I made the change, I can confirm nothing I did was deliberate.

As Thomas basically said, Bugzilla is basically my TODO list and sober me will see any remaining comments there tomorrow.

Is there any news on this? The current state is just broken:

- Alignment is off
- Forcefully hidden plasmoids (that are not passive) lose their sidebar
- Forcefully shown plasmoids (that are passive) have sidebar

I have experimented with mockups, but to be honest the results did not satisfy me in any way. Introducing yet another button to hide/unhide hidden items in the popup itself looks cluttered and not intuitive at all (especially if the button is next to the title as it was suggested).
I think the current arrow function is redundant, as closing the popups is exactly as comfortable without that arrow button by simply clicking on the element again, or click outside the popup (when it is not pinned), so I do no consider it likely that people wont get rid of their popups without the current arrow.
So as suggested, mixing up the arrow current arrow function with a function to show hidden elements isn't the best idea either.
So my personal suggestion would be to simply give the arrow button a "show/hide hidden items" meaning, as it was in version 4 and as it is on other platforms too.
The show hidden items button can only be placed in the system tray. everywhere else would not be reasonable and introducing another button besides the current arrow is not exactly the best idea imho.

EDIT:



Clicking the arrow in the right picture again, returns to the last state (i.e. the last open popup, or if no popup was open, it simply closes).
EDIT 2 Actually it would be best if clicking again would simply close the popup, for consistency reasons (clicking on the icon with the blue tab bar *always* closes the popup). The back functionality is redundant too, since if you want to a special item you cal simply click the icon of that item, which would be almost equal as fast.

If you still want an element that does the same as the current arrow (i.e. opening/closing a popup) I would suggest placing this button in the popup, there it makes more sense imho (my suggestion: next to the pin button, as those two functions are kind of related.)