[Libreoffice-ux-advise] [Bug 33223] Sidebar: as container for toolbars, ability to add functions missing from Sidebar

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33223

--- Comment #14 from orion at orionkidder.org ---
> I guess we will disagree on this point as i see the sidebar the same way i 
> see a dialog box. It is built in a particular way that users cant modify. 
> We can give them the option to no longer see a section, like we presently
> allow to no longer see a tab, but not with the rearrangement of elements
> within a section.

I think this comes down to design philosophy, to a degree. As soon as I saw the
sidebar, I thought "LO is allowing me to set it up like Pages. Sweet!" It meant
I could *remove* all the toolbars, save for just a few functions, and then use
bring up or dismiss the sidebar as I please. My goal is a minimum amount of
visual clutter while still retaining the ability to bring up those functions I
want (i.e., get as far away from MS Word as humanly possible). The sidebar
seems to be the only option to do that, so being able to customize it would be
ideal. 

> With toolbars, you have a simple structure of a row of buttons/controls,
> so in that scenario, providing the ability to customize it has benefits.
> But those benefits dont always work, e.g. make the formatting toolbar
> vertical in writer and you wont be able to use the non-button elements 
> like the style drop down, font name drop down or font size drop down.

And with the sidebar, you have several horizontal rows, so individual buttons
could be loaded until there's no more room, and there's no problem with
drop-down menus. From a visual standpoint, this isn't hard. (I have no idea
what kind of programming goes into doing, so I won't presume.)

> I guess this sounds reasonable, though i wonder about what kind of
> customization dialog would be appearing for them to implement this
> and whether they would be permitted to place those buttons wherever 
> on the panel as they please. 

Personally, I'd like a fluid space such that if you drop a button into it, that
button is centred. If you drop a second button, they pop to an equal distance
to each other. There would be a maximum number of buttons/drop-downs you could
put on a row, and there would be a default set at load-up. Not unlike a
toolbar. 

> I dont really see the benefit of putting
> this in a panel when they could easily have it in a toolbar. 

You can dismiss the sidebar with a key combo *without* visually disturbing the
document you're looking at, unlike toolbars which push the window when they
appear. That's the benefit, at least to my mind. Ultimately, I want something
that slides *out* of the window rather than pushing my document *in*, but a
floating toolbar kinda sorta does that job, so that's what I'm working with. 

> I see panels
> as going beyond what a toolbar can handle, as you can add all the elements
> found in the dialogs into it.

And a lot of us see the sidebar as the potential to not have to use the
toolbars at all. That's the difference in philosophy, as far as I can tell. If
you make the sidebar customizable, then we can both have what we want, I think.

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