Vertical panels

[SteveRiley]

Since pretty much every computer now has a wide screen, vertical space on (especially) laptops is sadly not what it used to be. I guess comfortably watching movies is more important than getting work done, but hey, I'm not complaining

I moved my panel over to the left edge of the screen and I'm thinking this will work. The Task Manager buttons look a little weird, and sometimes they just completely disappear (as you can see in my screenshot, Rekonq's button went on a hiatus as was typing this message.



So I tried the Smooth Tasks widget, which I in general liked better except that, when in a vertical panel, its buttons start lining up at the bottom rather than the top. That's too weird for me.

So those of you who use vertical panels -- what do you use?

[woodsmoke]

I advocated at anothe distro precisely that. That we provide multiple panels that were somehow "locked" and that we would have things like "social links" on one, maybe the right one and maybe internet apps on the left one. The regular panel at the top and Cairo Dock on the bottom.

One comment about the panel on the left.

In my humble opinion, Ubu has made a BIG mistake locking the vertical panel for Unity over there.

And the reason for this is the "natural sweep" of the hand for a RIGHT handed person. The "natural sweep" of the hand to swipe a finger across the screen or a mouse is to the right.

For the right handed person to go to the left side one has to go "across the body" which is not a "natural flow" of "just the arm".

Now, for the LEFT handed person, the Unity panel on the left is great.

Now, it could be argued that having it on the left is actually "better" for right handed person because the panel is not used "that" much...

don't know, it is just a thought.

But, yes, I've fiddled with them.

I keep a permanent locked, very small, panel on the left of my Gnome 2 SuperOS setup with just the clock/date/calendar and GIMP in it.

The normal panel is on the top and CairoDock is on the bottom.

woodsmoke

[SteveRiley]

I thought about Cairo Dock and Docky, but they both seem designed more for GNOME.

However, I'm intrigued by what you said regarding left-right movements. I've moved the panel over to the right side and I'll live with that for a while.

[woodsmoke]

Hi
I could never get Docky to work "to my satisfaction" , and I've tried it in a couple of distros that have it as a default.
woodsmoke

[SteveRiley]

Damn, Google is fast... in less than 50 minutes, my post here shows up in a Google search!

[Snowhog]

The 'Net is festooned with creepy, crawly, spiders! They don't miss a thing.

[woodsmoke]

lol my youngest boy commented that he is now, inadvertently, seeing my posts a lot when he makes a search... I replied that the great gods of the net don't discriminate as to whether the poster is older than dirt or not! LOL

woodsmoke

[whatthefunk]

About right hand panels....Ive tried it and its a complete disaster because scroll bars are always on the left. I also keep my close windows button on the top left of windows and in the bottom left is my shutdown button. There is no way to have a panel over there, at least not for me.

I use Cairo for a top dock. It works pretty well, but not perfectly. I have it set to disappear behind active windows and reappear when I push my mouse into the right hand corner, but sometimes it pops out when I push the mouse to anywhere on the top which can be annoying. I also sometimes have trouble adding launchers. Other than that, it works fine.

[rms]

I thought about Cairo Dock and Docky, but they both seem designed more for GNOME.

However, I'm intrigued by what you said regarding left-right movements. I've moved the panel over to the right side and I'll live with that for a while.

Welcome to the club. I've set mine also to allow windows to be above it so it's unobtrusive to full screen apps but pops up when I move mouse to the right edge.

[rms]

@admins
BTW, why is it that I don't see any formatting buttons when in advanced mode like Steve?

[SteveRiley]

@admins
BTW, why is it that I don't see any formatting buttons when in advanced mode like Steve?

In your profile settings, change the message editor interface to "Standard Editor."

[rms]

Thanks.

[rms]

In my humble opinion, Ubu has made a BIG mistake locking the vertical panel for Unity over there.

And the reason for this is the "natural sweep" of the hand for a RIGHT handed person. The "natural sweep" of the hand to swipe a finger across the screen or a mouse is to the right.

For the right handed person to go to the left side one has to go "across the body" which is not a "natural flow" of "just the arm".

Now, for the LEFT handed person, the Unity panel on the left is great.

Can't agree more with these statements.+1
I cannot even stand a glass of bear served on my left hand side, always have to move it to the right. So it is with everything except shooting. Somehow rifle feels better when supported by the right hand.

[james147]

Since pretty much every computer now has a wide screen, vertical space on (especially) laptops is sadly not what it used to be. I guess comfortably watching movies is more important than getting work done, but hey, I'm not complaining

I moved my panel over to the left edge of the screen and I'm thinking this will work. The Task Manager buttons look a little weird, and sometimes they just completely disappear (as you can see in my screenshot, Rekonq's button went on a hiatus as was typing this message.

Have had my panel on the side of me screen for ages seem to just make more sense now... I fixed my task manager by making the panel a little bigger (so the icons are square) but also set it so windows can cover it so it doesn't get in the way. I also have two monitors, so have one on the left of my left monitor and one on the right of my right monitor, so I have the best of both worlds . Shame kde still has a bug with the panels being in the middle of a multi screen setup.

So I tried the Smooth Tasks widget, which I in general liked better except that, when in a vertical panel, its buttons start lining up at the bottom rather than the top. That's too weird for me.

So those of you who use vertical panels -- what do you use?

Smooth Tasks is mostly deprecated these days I believe (its already been forked about 4 times). I believe the latest version was Icon Tasks... or something similar... but it has been merged in with the panel in kde 4.8 so isn't needed anymore.

[SteveRiley]

The KDE Goodies PPA contains the version of Smooth Tasks that I was using. I've replaced that with the icon-only task manager from the Plasma widget add-ons package. The right-side panel really does feel much more natural.