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

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

Yousuf (Jay) Philips <philipz85@hotmail.com> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |bubli@bubli.org,
                   |                            |kendy@collabora.com,
                   |                            |kris.kr296@gmail.com

--- Comment #15 from Yousuf (Jay) Philips <philipz85@hotmail.com> ---
(In reply to orion from comment #14)
> 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. 

Yes i consider LO's sidebar the same as the sidebar in Calligra, iWork Pages,
and IBM Symphony and want users who prefer to use it to have a similar UI
layout of one toolbar at the top for file and input functions and the sidebar
for properties. Calligra, Pages, and Symphony dont permit a user to modify the
sidebar and according to the GSoC student developer who is working on the
sidebar, he stated that it wouldnt be possible to allow a user to reorganize
content on an existing tab.

> 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.)

The sidebar has button, labels, textboxes, drop down lists, and many other
controls and these controls are not placed in a grid like fashion where it
would be easy to move them around. They are placed in their places using the
glade UI editor and being able to expose such an ability for users to do the
same would likely be impossible and quite complicated for regular users to use
if it was possible.

> 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. 

Yes if that functionality could be achieved, that would be great, but i dont
believe that would ever be possible.

> 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. 

You can move a toolbar into a docked position where it wont disrupt the
document window.

> 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.

If it can be achieved, i'm all for it, but believe it wont ever be possible
without a major overhaul of how controls are placed in the sidebar.

It would be great to here from some of the devs in the design team on how
possible this is, so CCing Rishabh, Kendy and Bubli.

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