Redesign of the preferences dialog

[M7S]

Redesign of the preferences dialog

The preferences dialog of DockbarX has been around for a while and gone through quite a few changes. While DockbarX has gotten more and more features the preferences dialog has become more and more crowded with options, to the point where the dialog can feel quite intimidating to new users. It is perhaps time to rewrite it from scratch to make it easier to understand. Now I need your help to get it done.

Mock ups

Send mock ups of how you would like the preference dialog to be rearranged to be easier to use and understand. Let your creativity flow freely as long as you remember that the key focus is on making something that is easier to use.

Language

English isn't my native language and I have a bit of a fondness for playing with words which doesn't always help when you need to write short informative sentences. Help me improve the wording in the texts to make the language more clear. This will help not only the end user, but also the translators who will have an easier job of translating when they don't have to start by guessing what the original text really means.

Opinions

Even if you can't make mock ups or don't speak English well enough to improve the language you can share your opinions of what things in the dialog you find most confusing and what you think should be changed.

Below are screenshots of how DockbarX preferences dialog looks like right now in untranslated English. Some options (regrettably far from all of them) have tooltips. Sadly they don't show up on screenshots.








The AWN tab screenshot is missing since it only shows up if AWN is running and right now I'm not on a computer with AWN installed. I'll add it to the issue later.

[ghost]

Hi, there! I've made some mockups of a much cleaner design. I love this dock but the settings dialogue has always been a bit daunting. I hope I can be useful!

I made sure every option is still configurable but some are done in a more humanistic way. I got lazy near the end and didn't do the other two tabs for mouse/keyboard and I still haven't done the popup dialogues that are activated with the 'gear' icon. If this is agreeable, the skeleton (and much of the meat) is all there. I changed only a few words around, I figured we could work on the language after the design has been implemented.

Also, I hope that lightswitches is an acceptable widget to use; I'm not sure if you support GTK2 or GTK3. If not GTK3, we can make do without them.

Thanks so much for such an amazing piece of software.

Some suggestions for the present:

Firstly, right clicking on the bar to configure says 'properties'. Properties is a word defining an object and gives no indication to configure the dockbar. 'Configure' or 'Customize' would be better terminology.

Secondly, the configuration window should not have a 'close' button: that's what the x is for at the top-right of your window!

How liberal shall I be on filing bug reports/pull requests?

[ghost]

On my singling of themes in the 'appearance' pane, my rationale is thusly:

User can select from available themes with the single drop-down menu. If the user has any desires to mix-and-match components or change colors, s/he may then open the configuration prompt (adjacent cog) and adjust to desires. If the user does customize the theme like this, then the main drop-down menu will display Custom.

Also, on the subject of the 'Needs attention effect' - the water ripples should only be presented to the user if Compiz is installed on the system.

And as for keyboard shortcuts/Mouse bindings, it is more useful to be able to click a button and map the configuration like in Gnome's keyboard binding settings or Compiz's settings manager.

As you might have noted, the window itself does not need to be as tall as my mockups - I had just left extra space in case I needed expansion.

If anything is not clear, please do speak up.

[M7S]

Thank you very much for those mock ups! They look like clear improvements over the current state. I will look at them more closely in a couple of weeks (after my wedding and honey moon) but right now the only bigger problem I see is that there doesn't seem to be any clear way to change the order of the applets?

[ghost]

Happy wedding! Congratulations 👍

Curses! I had no idea that the applets were ordered in that dialogue... I had assumed that it was graphically managed via the dock. If you're still wanting to keep that in the preferences, I imagine the proper way would be to have re-orderable checkbox items somewhat like the current layout.... but without the cumbersome left/right arrows to disable/enable.

[docphees]

Would it be possible to add a manual horizontal/vertical option? I opened an issue for this, but maybe this is the right place to ask..

[ghost]

@docphees, nah, that seems to be a legitimate bug.

[ghost]

It's been a while, @M7S. Any plans to implement something like this?

[M7S]

It has surely been a while. Sorry about that. I will implement something like this but I will see if it is possible to get rid of the gconfsettings and switch to dconf instead before I start with this so that I don't have to do big changes right after the rewrite. I can't giva any time frame for it, too much going on in personal life.

[M7S]

@ainola I know it was ages since you made the mockups but do you have any mocksups for the window actions and selection actions tabs?

[ghost]

@M7S It's been a while. :)

First, I think it would be best to know how involved you want to get with the GTK widgets. I'm assuming you plan on using GTK3? I also think proper mockups might be in order rather than the slap-job I did long ago. What I did may be a decent start but it could be better solidified.