[BitPim-devel] Toolbar changes

[Simon C]

I've checked in changes to the toolbar.
I've only tested on windows, can someone give it a run on mac and linux.
Check that the toolbar buttons and menu options are correctly
enabled/disabled with the different tabs selected. Including the send to
phone toolbar button being disabled when read only is selected.

Thanks,

Simon

[Joe Pham]

Post by Simon C
I've checked in changes to the toolbar.

The Help toolbar button just brings up the generic help. The Help menu brings up the Help of the current tab.

-Joe Pham




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[Simon C]

Post by Joe Pham

Post by Simon C
I've checked in changes to the toolbar.

The Help toolbar button just brings up the generic help. The
Help menu brings up the Help of the current tab.

Yes this was deliberate. The way the help option works in the bitpim menu is
not the way (windows) applications work. I was make the help button behave
in a way users expect it to.
Some apps have an additional button for context sensitive help, usually a ?
icon with a pointer on it, this allows the user to click on the control that
they want help on.
http://www.wxpython.org/docs/api/wx.ContextHelp-class.html says that
wxpython supports this, although it is unclear whether it will work just for
dialogs or the main window as well. This is a lot of work for very little
gain IMHO, I've done this in the past in MFC apps, but while observing test
users working on GUIs I've rarely seen them use it.

Simon

[Roger Binns]

Post by Simon C

Post by Joe Pham
The Help toolbar button just brings up the generic help. The
Help menu brings up the Help of the current tab.

Yes this was deliberate.

Although you have reasoning behind the change, I don't buy it
for a minute. Users click help because they are having an
issue now with what they are looking at now. It is trivial
to navigate from the current help page back to the top/table
of contents. It is *way* harder to navigate from the top to
where the documentation on each tab is.

Post by Simon C
The way the help option works in the bitpim menu is
not the way (windows) applications work.

That is because most other developers hate their users, have
help as an after thought, and don't bother having the help
as part of the development process. Consequently helpids etc
aren't maintained/available and so they are unlikely to be
able to use them anyway. Copying this idiocy to be consistent
with it is really silly.

Post by Simon C
Some apps have an additional button for context sensitive help,

IMHO context sensitive help is only useful if your gui is so
poorly designed that users can't figure out what bits of it
actually do.

Roger

[Roger Binns]

The screenshot shows what the toolbar looks like on the
Mac. They are greyed out because the window doesn't have
focus (the screen capture program did).

BTW the one thing you can't do on Linux and Mac is change
the toolbar images after they are set. I think the code
currently does the right thing about that. I assume it
will get fixed in wxWidgets/Python some day.

I think we should move the historical data bit into the
toolbar as it is now in several tabs and occupies so much
space. It could be a button which will then make it
easier to change.

I do strongly recommend you use Linux as well just so you
can double check gui stuff. I can make you a VmWare player
instance which should do the trick.

Alternately you can download the VmWare Server product (free).
Then just run VmWare server and the console on the same
machine.

Roger

[Simon C]

The screenshot shows what the toolbar looks like on the Mac.
They are greyed out because the window doesn't have focus
(the screen capture program did).

Hard to tell from the picture, but does it look OK? Do you think I should
use full size buttons (32x32) instead of these little things. I have an old
cube, I see if I can resurrect it, if we start making bigger gui changes
I'll need it to test.

BTW the one thing you can't do on Linux and Mac is change the
toolbar images after they are set. I think the code
currently does the right thing about that. I assume it will
get fixed in wxWidgets/Python some day.

I recently found a post about this on a python forum by someone who was
familiar :) The responses he got were not helpful.

I think we should move the historical data bit into the
toolbar as it is now in several tabs and occupies so much
space. It could be a button which will then make it easier to change.

Agreed, I'll look into it.

I do strongly recommend you use Linux as well just so you can
double check gui stuff. I can make you a VmWare player
instance which should do the trick.

Please, this looks simpler than setting up a server.

Simon

[Roger Binns]

Post by Simon C
Hard to tell from the picture, but does it look OK? Do you think I should
use full size buttons (32x32) instead of these little things.

Yes, the small size on Mac makes them useless. They also have white
backgrounds for some reason.

Post by Simon C
I recently found a post about this on a python forum by someone who was
familiar :) The responses he got were not helpful.

But if we are lukcy maybe more recent wxPython releases will
let you change the toolbar icons. I can't remember if I reported
a wxWidgets bug for this, but if not then it is worthwhile doing
so.

Post by Simon C

I do strongly recommend you use Linux as well just so you can
double check gui stuff. I can make you a VmWare player
instance which should do the trick.

Please, this looks simpler than setting up a server.

VmWare server is trivial to setup. Just run the install
executable. It also installs the console at the same
time. Run the console and you'll be getting the same experience
as you do with with Workstation.

My Redhat 9 image is 5.8GB (and that is after a shrink!)
Some gunk could be removed I guess but VmWare server will
be the most desired route.

Roger

[Simon C]

Post by Roger Binns
Although you have reasoning behind the change, I don't buy it
for a minute. Users click help because they are having an
issue now with what they are looking at now. It is trivial
to navigate from the current help page back to the top/table
of contents. It is *way* harder to navigate from the top to
where the documentation on each tab is.

Perhaps, although the gui part of bitpim is easy to use and self
explanatory, going by user mailings the main issue that people get stuck on
is configuring the phone settings and understanding what their phone
supports, showing the current tab help is not going to help them.

Seeing as I am in the minority on this I'll change it.

When displaying the help on the current tab, the tree view of the help
window is on the welcome page, I expect the treeview to be expanded and the
leaf correspnding to the help being displayed to be selected. Is this under
our control to fix?


Simon

[Roger Binns]

Post by Simon C
When displaying the help on the current tab, the tree view of the help
window is on the welcome page, I expect the treeview to be expanded and the
leaf correspnding to the help being displayed to be selected. Is this under
our control to fix?

That is what the Windows help viewer decides to do. The wxWidgets help viewer
(used on Linux and Mac) does select the correct part of the tree. So does
the web page view.

Roger

[Simon C]

Post by Roger Binns

Post by Simon C

Post by Roger Binns
I do strongly recommend you use Linux as well just so you

can double

Post by Simon C

Post by Roger Binns
check gui stuff. I can make you a VmWare player instance which
should do the trick.

Please, this looks simpler than setting up a server.

VmWare server is trivial to setup. Just run the install
executable. It also installs the console at the same time.
Run the console and you'll be getting the same experience as
you do with with Workstation.

I've gotten my mac to work, do you think there is a value add in having
linux gui test environment?

Simon

[Roger Binns]

Post by Simon C
I've gotten my mac to work, do you think there is a value add in having
linux gui test environment?

Yes. You can grep the code for IsWindows, IsGtk and IsMac to see that they
all have their quirks.

Can you get an iso image for a Linux distribution of your choice? If so
I should be able to make a vmplayer config file that works with it.

Roger

[Simon C]

Post by Roger Binns

Post by Simon C
I've gotten my mac to work, do you think there is a value add in
having linux gui test environment?

Yes. You can grep the code for IsWindows, IsGtk and IsMac to
see that they all have their quirks.
Can you get an iso image for a Linux distribution of your
choice? If so I should be able to make a vmplayer config
file that works with it.

I can easily download fedora core 4 so this is my choice unless you
recommend otherwise. I'll get the DVD iso.
I've downloaded and installed vmplayer.

Simon