[bt-devel] MDI Style Toolbars

[Gary Holmlund]

Eeli Kaikkonen wrote:
> On Fri, 26 Feb 2010, Gary Holmlund wrote:
>   
>> I have checked in the MDI Style ToolBars feature. It is svnr2290. I have
>> also built a Windows version which is available at
>> http://sourcearchives.com/downloads.
>>
>> To see the feature you must use the "View > Toolbars > Show toolbars in
>> text windows" menu and uncheck it. The toolbar items for the active text
>> window will appear on the main window toolbar. Note that these toolbars
>> are movable. You can drag/drop them by dragging the vertical dots at the
>> left of each individual toolbar. This allows you to put the navigation
>> toolbar at the right side of the main window if you desire. These
>> movements will be saved with the session.
>>
>> Note that I changed the text of some menus under the View menu. This
>> will require language translation changes.
>>     
> All developers, please don't put the burden of testing on me alone.
>
> From the usability point of view, what would be the best menu structure
> and menu texts? The current structure is quite good, but not the only
> possible. Now the subwindow/mainwindow option is found only if the user
> knows it in advance. How about putting it in top level? The "Toolbars"
> submenu could be renamed to "Show toolbars" and inside it each menu text
> could be simply "Main", "Navigation" etc. instead of "Show main" etc.
>   
The menu View>Toolbars is used almost universally used in Windows. There 
does not seem to be a standard on linux. Several linux applications such 
as Firefox, Thunderbird, and Open Office also use View>Toolbars. The 
menus below Toolbars seem less standardized anywhere. It looks like the 
most common to see would be like "Main toolbar", "Navigation toolbar", etc.
> Now the wording isn't clear: does "Show toolbars in text windows" mean
> that text window toolbars are shown, because "Show main" means that the
> main toolbar is shown? Whether it is in top level or in the submenu, I
> would make it "Show text window toolbars in main window" or something
> similar ("Put text window toolbars..."? Is it good English?). It's a bit
> easier to comprehend and describes the situation better: by default it's
> unchecked and if you want to change the default behaviour, you check the
> box which describes what will happen.
>   
"Put" does not seem the best to me. What about "Display text window 
toolbars on main window"?

Gary