Features/New Toolbar Design

Summary

Redesign the activity toolbar to not use tabs and use toolbar buttons that can reveal secondary functionality instead.

Owner

• Name: Aleksey Lim
• Email: send an email

Current status

• Targeted release: 0.86
• Last updated: Sun Jul 12 02:22:30 UTC 2009
• Percentage of completion: 75%

Detailed Description

sugar.graphics.toolbar module consists of 2 widgets:

• Toolbar main widget which represents toolbar itself
• ToolbarButton tool button to insert to Toolbar, which could be expanded to sub-widget

NOTE: Toolbar was designed to have only one level of sub-widgets.

Toolbar

sugar.graphics.toolbar.Toolbar extends gtk.VBox:

• top property to access to gtk.Toolbar interface
• padding horizontal padding for top toolbar and all sub-widgets
• modify_bg method to modify background color of toolbar itself and all sub-widgets

ToolbarButton

sugar.graphics.toolbar.ToolbarButton extends sugar.graphics.toolbutton.ToolButton:

• toolbar RO property, if parent of button is sugar.graphics.toolbar.Toolbar
• page RW GObject property, sub-widget to expand
• expanded RW property, if page expanded

If sugar.graphics.toolbar.Toolbar.palette property wasn't set manually it will contain palette with page.

Example

from sugar.graphics.toolbar import Toolbar, ToolbarButton

toolbar = Toolbar()

tollbarbutton_1 = ToolbarButton(
       page=gtk.Button('sub-widget #1'),
       icon_name='computer-xo')
toolbar.top.insert(tollbarbutton_1, -1)

tollbarbutton_2 = ToolbarButton(
       page=gtk.Button('sub-widget #2'),
       icon_name='button_cancel',
       tooltip='with custom palette instead of sub-widget')
toolbar.top.insert(tollbarbutton_2, -1)

Benefit to Sugar

Make process of switching between toolbars more clear, use tool buttons that are showing all time(in main toolbar) i.e. having Close/Help buttons visible all time could be very useful.

Scope

• implementation in sugar-toolkit
• provide API in sugar.activity.activity for new toolbars

One option for new API is supporting bunch of methods to create most useful toolitems/sub-toolbars. (see [1] for example usage).

• toolbar() toolbutton with activity sub-toolbar
• stop_button()
• undo_button()
• redo_button()
• copy_button()
• paste_button()

How To Test

In progress..

User Experience

If this feature is noticeable by its target audience, how will their experiences change as a result? Describe what they will see or notice.

Dependencies

• only sugar-toolkit

Contingency Plan

None necessary, revert to previous release behaviour.

Documentation

Eben's Design_Team/Proposals/Toolbars proposal. Gary's additional Design Team/Designs/Toolbars mockups.

Release Notes

Solution for the stop activity issue, pointed out at http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/452

Comments and Discussion

• See discussion tab for this feature