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Ideas | Propositions

Subjects Author Language Messages Last message
[Locked] panel view ideas [Bug #195]
Guest English 10 Guest [Read]
24 May 2012 à 11:13

Guest, Thursday 05 May 2011 à 11:44

Hi,
first of all thanks for the wonderful job, I am using the dock on all my computers to my great satisfaction. I do, however, meet some annoyances mainly with panel view, so here are my ideas for improvement:

  • positioning icons on screen in panel view using separators
- My ideal is to have icons on the panel positioned at the right (or centered). This is now only possible if I have also something on the left and insert a separator between. It would be great if when the first item on panel is separator, the remaining icons were aligned right. Centering could be achieved by having separator first, then icons and separator last.

  • panel view positioning
- The dock in panel view always takes up the whole screen edge, the options "lateral offset" and "relative alignment" have no meaning. I took me a while before I realized the dock is there even if only a part of it shows itself. You could either remove (or disable) these options or make the dock behave as the other views, ie. the panel would not stretch itself unless asked to. If that would be the case, the current "stretch option" effect could be achieved by configuring the appearance of separators (which would be specific for this dock).

  • shaping the panel view window for X events
- The panel view window, even if not visible, takes up the whole screen edge and consumes all the X events there. If I have a maximized window and panel on top, I can not reach the window's frame even though it is visible and not hidden behing the panel. The panel view window should be shaped so that the input area corresponds to the visible area making possible to interact with the visible parts of lower windows.

  • rearrangement of icon order using the "Configure this dock" configuration window
- This window lists nicely all the icons, separators and such, it is not possible though to move (eg. drag and drop) the icons and launchers in the left pane to change their order or even move them between docks. This not much of a problem for other views, where icons can be moved on dock directly, but it is not intuitive in the panel view, where parts of the panel are not visible (eg. when panel stretches to the edges).
- The menu option "Configure this dock" could be present also for the "main" dock and the dock instance specific configuration could be moved there from the main configuration window

  • text items with "variable" dimensions in panel

- I think it was already discussed here - the text display on panel is not optimal. Now I have to specify the icon dimensions even if it contains pure text. The image is then scaled to fit the given dimensions, which distorts the text in it. You could either have the final icon dimensions computed from the string to be displayed (which would have to be fixed length to avoid unwanted effects) or scale the font before rendering the text to fit into the given box. I have calendar applet in mind, but others rendering text (eg. keyboard indicator) can benefit too. I am not sure, though, if it is an issue of dock itself or particular applets.

Best regards,

Michal V.

fabounet, Monday 09 May 2011 à 15:51


Subscription date : 30 November 2007
Messages : 17118
The panel view window should be shaped so that the input area corresponds to the visible area making possible to interact with the visible parts of lower windows.

+1 on this.

about the first 2, what about using the "default" 2D view with a small zoom (or no zoom at all) ?
after all, the panel view is made to act as a panel

It would be great if when the first item on panel is separator, the remaining icons were aligned right

although this feature could be done easily.

rearrangement of icon order using the "Configure this dock" configuration window

yep that could be a good feature.

about text in the icons (Clock and keybord-indicator), the text is a bit stretched vertically to have the biggest text possible. but that's maybe not a good idea

Guest, Monday 09 May 2011 à 21:51

fabounet :

about the first 2, what about using the "default" 2D view with a small zoom (or no zoom at all) ?
after all, the panel view is made to act as a panel :)

Yes, that would work if it was the single dock, but I have another dock on the left using 3d view (in some way mimicking unity, but better ), so I can not easily turn off zoom or make the top dock smaller unless it is a panel.

I think the Gnome3 panel supports left|center|right alignment.

fabounet, Friday 13 May 2011 à 13:49


Subscription date : 30 November 2007
Messages : 17118
ok, well I'll see what can be done here, thanks for the report

Guest, Friday 11 May 2012 à 18:32

Hi, all.
Sorry for digging out this old thread/bug but I have the same problem like the person above.
I would like to have a 3D-Panel at the bottom and a "wingpanel" at the top right corner like this:
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/12/wingpanel-in-action/

I could of course use awn-wingpanel like shown in this video:
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/01/create-a-minimialist-wingpanel-using-awn-video/

But I like cairo-dock much more and don't want maintain two docks. So it would be very nice if some of developers could implement the first two ideas of the original poster or maybe an other solution to archive the same effect. Maybe by make it possible to set relative alignment for the panel like it is done for default 2d-view.

Thank you for this nice piece of software.

Bye

Waldemar

fabounet, Saturday 12 May 2012 à 02:19


Subscription date : 30 November 2007
Messages : 17118
do you mean, a panel that wouldn't extend to the whole screen width, but would only be in the left/right corner ?
currently, you could achieve something close with a panel containing 1 icon in the left, then a transparent separator, and then the icons you want on the right.

Guest, Saturday 12 May 2012 à 03:19

Hi fabounet thank you for your quick response.

>>do you mean, a panel that wouldn't extend to the whole screen width, but would only be in the left/right corner ?

Yes exactly.

>>currently, you could achieve something close with a panel containing 1 icon in the left, then a transparent separator, and then the icons you want on the right.

I know this, but this 1 icon would covering the close button for maximized windows. I mean the close button on window decorator, I have them on the left side.

fabounet, Saturday 12 May 2012 à 03:48


Subscription date : 30 November 2007
Messages : 17118
ok I see the point of goind this now
I think it's a good option to add to the 3.1

Guest, Saturday 12 May 2012 à 14:17

Ok thank you very much. I use ppa:cairo-dock-team/weekly so I can test this option for you as soon as its there.

Bye

Waldemar

Guest, Thursday 24 May 2012 à 11:13

!!! Don't forget the Anti-spam filter !!!

Guest, Thursday 24 May 2012 à 11:13

!!! Don't forget the Anti-spam filter !!!

Ideas | Propositions

Subjects Author Language Messages Last message
[Locked] panel view ideas [Bug #195]
Guest English 10 Guest [Read]
24 May 2012 à 11:13


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