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Re: Hiding the Dock?


In answer to everyone's comments, I should add:
What would be REALLY great is if we could set this property dynamically during runtime. Does anyone know of a way to do that? I'm familiar with macs, and Java, but not mac-Java. :)

If we could set this property dynamically, then we could explain to the user when there is a problem and offer to adjust the property for them, without pointing out that they have to re-launch the application. Also we could offer a always-apply-this-decision checkbox.

On Aug 17, 2005, at 2:33 PM, Herb Poppe wrote: 
Perhaps a better approach, should you detect a "size problem"
on any platform, would be to make the panel scrollable and
adjust the window (frame) size to fit.

This suggestion did come up in our meeting earlier today. We could also have solved this problem with a well-placed splitpane. But this only shifts the responsibility to the user... and it doesn't really help the problem. And this would result in nested scrollpanes in a really awkward place.

I know in an ideal situation we would never even have to face the dilemma of where we can squeeze a few more pixels, but the real world isn't always ideal.

Jeremy Wood wrote: 
Our cross-platform application looks fine on Windows, but on Mac if a
user has a large dock size then certain controls get chopped off our
panels.
Greg Guerin wrote:
It'd have to be a large dock size AND a small screen size. Which makes me
wonder what your app's minimum required screen-size is: 640x480? 800x600?
1024x768? Other?
Our minimum required screen size for this app is 1024x768. So smaller resolutions are not an issue.

And whatever your minimum size is, how does the app look on Windows when
the screen is smaller than that, and what do you do about it then?
A good point, but we won't run the app in those cases. After loading the splash screen, we'll present the user with a dialog explaining that the application requires a larger resolution.

It might also cause some problems for users who have a large dock for a
very good reason of their own, such as being large enough to see it due to
diminished eyesight, large enough to hit due to diminished muscular
control, or simply because the screen's being used from across the living
room.
Hmmmm.
You sound like you know more about accessibility than I do; but it sounds to me like those scenarios would be better remedied by dock magnification than dock visibility.

I always thought that interface-wise the autohide feature of the dock is extremely easy to navigate... Jef Raskin raves about a similar notion: 'Zoomworld'.
However, I find it *visually* annoying when it comes and goes, and I leave it off most of the time. But I think its more of an aesthetic problem than an accessibility problem.

And I think if the user sees a sovereign application taking up the entire window -- including where the dock used to be -- they'll quickly understand the decision.

Another alternative (see iMovie) would be to slide the window behind the dock (if that's even possible in Java). But our window has a few key controls along the bottom of the window, and so this is -- debatably -- just as bad as any other ideas on the table.

You may think that making the dock autohide is the lesser evil, but your
users may well think otherwise, depending on what the app does and whether
the net value is worthwhile.
Well... we'll see. And as I mentioned last time: we *aren't* turning autohide on by default. Because someone here at the office feels as strongly as you do. Or maybe much stronger. :) I'm not convinced it's the way to go... on my Mac laptop I regularly can't see certain controls in the app. I don't like giving users the option of leaving things that way, and I don't like giving them such a strange decision the first time they launch the program after a clean OS install. But no matter.
As long as we're addressing the problem somehow... that's a start. :) We have plenty of other bugs to work out in the meantime.

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 >Re: Hiding the Dock? (From: Herb Poppe <email@hidden>)



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