[idea] Status Menu modifications

[RobbieThe1st]

I've been using my N900 for a few weeks now, and one thing I found to be a pain is that if you have enough status menu(when you click on the clock/battery icon) options that it scrolls, its very hard to:
A. tell that there are more options that can be scrolled to, and
B. scroll the list without accidentally hitting a button, especially with your finger.

I'm thinking two potential solutions to this:
1. Make three columns.
Pros:

Lots more space.
More buttons accessible from a single page, no scrolling to try to find an option.


Cons:

May be harder to code
Buttons will have to be shrunk to fit; some of them with longer text may not work right.
If you fill up the list, you are back at square 1.

2. Add a visible, wide scrollbar to the right hand side when needed.
Pros:

Potentially easier to program; scrolling functionality is there already, it would only need some graphics and some stretching of the window.
Any number of buttons are possible, getting to them would be easier than now.

Cons:

Less buttons per page
Scrolling is still needed to access more than the current number of buttons.



What do you guys think?

[fw190]

Option 1 sounds interesting but as you wrote it could be difficult so it is up to you or anyone else with programming skills. If option 2 is a lot easier maybe you could try to do it for starters and if people are interested in it try the first one. Personally I think that 2 is OK.

[qwerty12]

Just grab the source to hildon-status-menu.

1. The menu's width is an #ifdef and columns are just a property with it being explicitly set to "2". Of course, it may require a bit more work than that...
2. Just make it use GtkScrolledWindow instead of HildonPannableArea. Since they share similar ways of working, making it do so isn't hard as such.

[giecsar]

This was on my mind too, I was hoping there was some configuration file which could be easily edited, such as a .xml...

[ToJa92]

Would be cool if it worked like Android's statusbar, which you drag down so that you either can expose a part of it(in N900 you could view todays date easily that way). Or you could drag it all the way to the bottom and it will stick there, and let you view all status messages.

[RobbieThe1st]

Just grab the source to hildon-status-menu.

1. The menu's width is an #ifdef and columns are just a property with it being explicitly set to "2". Of course, it may require a bit more work than that...
2. Just make it use GtkScrolledWindow instead of HildonPannableArea. Since they share similar ways of working, making it do so isn't hard as such.
Huh - I just downloaded that package's source, looked through the various .c files in the src directory, and while I found widths and heights, I didn't see that column property.


This was on my mind too, I was hoping there was some configuration file which could be easily edited, such as a .xml...
Being open source, someone could -add- that functionality easily enough.
I'd do it, but not knowing C, or any variant thereof, I'm gonna have enough trouble simply editing the code and compiling.

[leetut]

i didnt realise it scrolled!

[qwerty12]

Huh - I just downloaded that package's source, looked through the various .c files in the src directory, and while I found widths and heights, I didn't see that column property.


Check the update_portrait function where g_object_set is called in hd-status-menu.c. I haven't tried changing it myself, though.

Anyway... I had a go with #2.

This is a hack, so I won't share any debs.

When there's only 10 widgets (you can't scroll):
http://imgur.com/oDpMS.png

When there's more:
http://imgur.com/LuaBu.png
http://imgur.com/SGy6g.png

As you can see, it breaks my Simple Brightness Widget (it's Nokia's fault for making me use a deprecated widget to remain true to the Display CPA look and feel), whilst HildonButton widgets and its derivatives fit to the window. Ideally, the width should be made bigger I guess.

http://slexy.org/view/s21mSJizAO