Bug 51191

Description Carolyn MacLeod 2004-02-04 15:11:31 EST

I am running R3.0 200401290841 with New Look activated.

There are several problems with the current implementation and location of the 
new-look perspectives toolbar.

1) The location in the far upper right corner is just wrong. It is too far 
away from all of the action. I have read bug 22633, 35902, and 27209, and I 
understand what they are saying about removing the vertical sidebar to save 
horizontal space. I agree that there should be sufficient space in the main 
toolbar to add the perspective icons. But don't right-justify it! It belongs 
on the far left, above the (default and best location for the) navigational 
views (i.e. Navigator/Package Explorer). Changing perspectives is 
a 'navigational' context switch, and the perspectives toolbar needs to be 
close to the navigational views. (I personally don't mind it in the old 
vertical sidebar, and I also think it would be interesting to see it in a 
horizontal bar on the bottom left, analagous with the OS's task bar. But as 
both of those options take up space, and the goal is always to conserve space, 
I will concede that somewhere in the main toolbar is the most efficient use of 
screen real-estate). But put it on the left, please.

The current new-look perspectives toolbar introduces several other new 
problems. I will list them here:

2) The default preference should be to not have text on the perspective bar. 
In fact, I don't think we need to bother allowing text at all. The perspective 
icons are all very distinct and easily recognizable, and tooltip text is good 
enough for the beginner user, as it matches all typical toolbar paradigms. If 
the perspectives bar is going to share space with the main toolbar, then text 
is not welcome. I typically have 5 perspectives open: Resource, Java, CVS, 
Debug, Synchronize. With text, this takes up easily half of the available 
space, which is not only unacceptable, but it forces the coolbar to do some 
strange wrapping when I change perspectives.

3) The "Open a Perspective" tool button is too wide. It needs to be the same 
width as the other perspective tools (i.e. basically square). I'm not sure why 
it's too wide - it appears to be allowing space for an arrow button that isn't 
there.

4) The "Open a Perspective" tool's tooltip is not reliable. It is there at 
first, but then it seems to disappear for good. This bug needs to be fixed.

5) The horizontal gap between the "Open a Perspective" tool and the rest of 
the tools is too large. This is partly because of point (3) above, and partly 
to accomodate the Nike swoosh. It needs to be made narrower, to the point 
where the swoosh only takes up the same amount of horizontal space as a 
standard toolbar separator. This is because (a) it wastes toolbar real-estate, 
and (b) it makes it seem as if the "Open a Perspective" tool is not related to 
the other perspective tools.

6) Vertical space wasted. Why is there such a large vertical gap between the 
main toolbar and the start of the views? Is this because we are using a 
CoolBar now, or is this to accomodate the Nike swoosh in the perspectives bar? 
Whatever reason, it looks odd, and wastes vertical space, to have such a large 
gap there. (And the gap gets really large when the coolbar wraps gratuitously 
to take up 2 rows... but that's another story).

7) Notice that not all of the space where the old sidebar used to be has been 
reclaimed. There are still several pixels of horizontal space available. You 
can tell by looking at the width of the left margin of the eclipse window 
compared to the width of the right margin (and the width of view separations). 
This is probably just a bug somewhere, but if we are going to go to all this 
effort to reclaim space, we really ought to reclaim all of it.