Re: NSToolbar

[Philippe C . D . Robert]

Hi,

On Jan 12, 2004, at 5:57 PM, Stefan Urbanek wrote:
> > >   just read that in the GNUstep/Cocoa thread and became curious: 
> > > What are
> > > the reasons for this dislike of NSToolbar? I'm a happy Cocoa user 
> > > and I'm
> > > just curious.
> >
> > I bloat NSWindow.
>
> What about context sensitive toolbar, where context is focused (key) 
> window? Applications will have just one NSToolBarPanel which will 
> change according to the focused window. It can be either floating or 
> with fixed position somewhere on the screen. No screen pollution and 
> no need of views relayout in windows.

> With this we will get another concept of "Action Panel" ( = Toolbar 
> panel/window) to the existing one: Inspector Panel. The "Inspector" 
> panel changes its contents according to the selected object where you 
> can "inspect" the object's contents. The "Action Panel" will change 
> it's contents according to the selected window and will display all 
> available actions that can be done in the "selected" window.
>
> What do you think?

No, please, this is IMHO a really bad proposal, a toolbar is what its 
name implies and belongs to its window. If you do not like this UI 
element, then just do not use it, but please do not try to make 
something different out of it just because of personal taste. And as 
you know - sorry for repeating myself - toolbars were and always have 
been part of the NEXTSTEP UI, just not in the form of NSToolbars, so 
there is no reason to reject the principle of a toolbar!

Besides the screen pollution is no argument against NSToolbars as you 
can easily hide them completely whenever you want to, at least on Mac 
OS X.

-Phil
--
Philippe C.D. Robert
http://www.nice.ch/~phip/