Vertical taskbars on MATE

[Little Girl]

Hey there,

Liam Proven wrote:
>Little Girl <littlergirl at gmail.com> wrote:

>> My mistake. I misread what you wrote and ran with it. Although now
>> that I've had a chance to experiment some more with this, I think
>> the orientation of the applets should be considered (and adjusted,
>> when needed) no matter where they are in the panel. Even better
>> would be to give the user the choice of which way to orient each
>> applet independently.  
>
>No, that's fine, I absolutely understand. Unfortunately, this is the
>default assumption: it's what most programmers of desktop
>environments assume.

Ah, okay.

>For non-critical text, vertical alignment is doable.

Agreed.

>For instance, I quite liked the wm2 window manager, years ago:
>
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wm2
>
>http://www.all-day-breakfast.com/wm2/

It's definitely not my style, and I'd get a crick in my neck if I had
to use it, but I can see why it might be appealing to anyone who's
trying to up their vertical space.

>You probably know what most of your windows are called. You need to
>be able to distinguish them but the contents presumably help.

I definitely prefer a label of some sort on any window.

>So, vertical window title bars worked for me -- and they save even
>more vertical space.

That makes sense and, in such a case, is the best solution.

>Another example of a fairly common thing I encounter with FOSS
>desktops.
>
>Made-up example:
>
>"Our window manager is totally customisable! You can apply textures,
>animated widgets, and more to window decorations. Anything you want!"
>"Okay, cool. Can I have a vertical title bar on the left edge instead
>of at the top?"
>"..."
>"You didn't think of that, did you? So it can't do 'anything', only
>decorated top title bars, right?"
>"NOBODY WANTS THAT! GO AWAY, THAT'S STUPID AND YOU'RE A DUMB TROLL!"

Oh, I know. Some of my wishes are quite reasonable, but there are
some folks who get all worked up if you bring up those wishes.

>Vertical panels are fine. If more desktops had _properly_ modular
>designs with decent vertical panel support, there wouldn't be the
>profusion of dock apps. No need for a dock if you have functional
>vertical panels. This is one of the things that irks me about Budgie
>-- all that work and it can't do anything LXDE or Xfce can do with
>their built-in panels and applets.

I have yet to experience Budgie and I'm not quite sure what the
difference is between a panel and a dock other than that a dock is
usually smaller (although MATE panels can be made very dock-like if
you turn off their expansion).

>Both Xfce and LXDE include default setups with a top panel, à lá Mac
>OS X, and a dock at left or bottom, without additional apps.

Okay.

>But for 23 years now, Windows has let you move the taskbar anywhere
>and keep it usable, with readable, left-to-right (or R-to-L for
>Semitic languages, AFAIK) contents.

I didn't realize that. Probably because I never tried. I just left it
at the bottom.

>BeOS did the same with its Tracker. Its default arrangement was not
>"expanded", vertically, at top right -- so it appeared as a box which
>grew as you launched more apps.

I can see how some people would like that, but the fact that it
changes would bother me. I like things to be however they are and
stay that way rather than fluctuating depending on how I use them.
That's one of the reasons I never enable automatic hiding  for my
panels.

>https://www.jfedor.org/shots/beos.png
>
>That works too. :-)

Is that one of the context menu only desktops? I've tried something
like that once and wouldn't have minded it much if there was a way to
access it while a program was full-screen, but would still miss that
bottom left button with a menu on it that's been there for years.

>I liked it in the 1990s, but now, with every computer I use regularly
>having widescreens, they are needed more than ever.

I just go for an adjusted resolution to get more screen real estate.
That and using more than one monitor.

>GNOME 2 never did it right. MATE still doesn't. Cinnamon doesn't.

It looks like you're right about that, at least for MATE. I didn't
test GNOME2 or Cinnamon, but I'll take your word for it.

>KDE, whose devs think it is totally customisable, does it but badly
>-- many components grow huge. You can't choose options like labelled
>or unlabelled window buttons -- it depends on panel size.

Many of the applets become huge in MATE when you do vertical panels,
too.

>> Interesting, and I see places where yours handle things elegantly
>> that MATE doesn't.  

>*Nod* Thanks for that!

Any time. It was well deserved.

>> Agreed, and that's as it should be. In cases where it wouldn't make
>> sense, the applet shouldn't be offered, and, if present, should be
>> disabled.  

>I can't offhand think of anything that doesn't work that way. Fly-out
>submenus or panels should work. Drop-downs should still work. What
>kind of thing were you thinking of?

You already saw one down below with the TopMenu Panel Applet. Then
there are the Indicator Applet Appmenu, Timer, and Window Picker,
each of which misbehaves in some way on a vertical panel.

>> Several of them were huge, too small, vertical (surprising on some
>> of the text ones), and one of them didn't display everything until
>> I clicked in what looked like empty space, but was actually part
>> of the applet.  
>
>Yup. Just like GNOME 2 did.

That's very strange behavior and probably not intended by the
developers.

>> Last, but not least, the TopMenu Panel Applet fell over
>> completely because it displayed horizontally, so most of it was cut
>> off. It really ought to not be offered at all when a panel is
>> vertical.  
>
>Ah, now, OK, that is a good example! :-)

And obviously something the developers didn't test or they would have
done something to cause it to be disabled rather than showing up in a
form that renders it completely useless.

>I think the best way to handle it might be the way that the Windows
>Quicklaunch bar does it. This has been disabled since WinXP but it's
>still there, still works, and I use it when I have to use Win10.
>
>http://mywindowshub.com/add-quick-launch-toolbar-windows-10/

Nice. I hadn't had experience in using that and will be enabling that
in my work computer tomorrow.

>If it has space, it shows a tray of icons (labelled or not, titled or
>not, according to preference settings). But if there isn't room, it
>shows the first line, or the title, and a double right chevron:
>
>»

That would be fine.

>Click the chevron and a small fly-out panel appears with a
>vertically-arranged list of labelled icons (assuming you have labels
>turned on).

That would also be fine (and I do). The screenshot shows something
very similar to my main menu in MATE. Just some icons with a bit of
text next to them, which is exactly what I like.

>So a top-panel menu would just show the app's name, and when clicked,
>it would behave like a context menu, vertically-arranged.

I can imagine that, but I remove that panel immediately after
installation, although it would work the same way with my bottom
panel.

>My suggestions would be either LXDE or Xfce. Works quite well in
>them. Xfce's implementation is more customisable.

I've tried both of those a few years ago, but not recently. I
rejected Xfce because it doesn't have a normal desktop. If I can't
store files and directories on the desktop, that's a deal-breaker for
me. I can't remember why I rejected LXDE. Maybe because of its menu
or because you couldn't put the trash in the panel's tray. It's been
too long. I'll have to give both of those a try again.

>> I've updated the web page above, adding in a couple of additional
>> detailed experiments in which you can see the panels and applets
>> falling over repeatedly in various ways.  
>
>Oh, good job! 👍

Thanks. I figured you might like those as a comparison to what you
see.

>> Or at least showing what a top and bottom panel can, which it
>> sometimes can't, currently.  
>
>Conceded. Just because there's nothing I use which can't work
>vertically, it's still possible.

Right, and there will be someone who does use those, so they should
still be considered and addressed in some way by the developers.

>> I didn't test this, but even with the default number, I lose some
>> of them just by changing to a left or right panel and I definitely
>> do when changing sizes.  
>
>I will see if I can do a screenshot to show what I mean.

Sounds good.

-- 
Little Girl

There is no spoon.