Slidebar deprecation

[Ryan Shaw]

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 7:43 AM, Daniel <dani...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Actually, we intended to depricate slidebars in favor of a few slicker
> more usable ui mechanisms.

Can you elaborate on that?

[Daniel]

One thing we were considering was to forward Jetpack UI calls that
establish extensions in the slidebar to another UI type, such as
panels (door hangers). This way the extension would not just break.
Internally, slidebar has not been the biggest UI hit because the
paradigms it creates within the content area. Also imho, in everyday
use it is choppy as hell and performs poorly, so for a production
version those issues would need to be smoothed over for me to feel
good about giving it the go-ahead. Of course I would love to hear your
thoughts as well.

- Daniel

On Jan 28, 11:52 am, Ryan Shaw <ryans...@ischool.berkeley.edu> wrote:

[Daniel]

Oh and please don't get too frustrated about this topic, nothing is
'decided' yet, we are
just stating our feelings and experiences. The title of "Slidebar
deprecation" is
much more 'certain' sounding than the current status ;)

- Daniel

[Ryan Shaw]

You used the word "deprecate", and I don't have a problem with it--as
an earlier poster pointed out, we shouldn't expect a stable API at
this point. I was just curious what had been discussed as
alternatives. I agree that the current user experience with the
slidebar is less than optimal, and the API is confusing too.

My 2 cents: what is really needed is just some way for jetpacks to
establish persistent panels in the browser chrome. These panel areas
would appear above, below, or to the right or left of the tabbed
content window. A jetpack would indicate an initial position and
dimension for its panel (e.g. "top", "100% width", "50px height"), but
it could be dragged to another position (e.g. the bottom) by the user.
Panels would stay open until explicitly closed. Multiple panels in the
same position would stack, meaning all panels open at a given time
would be visible. There would be no notification mechanism--panels
that are closed are essentially disabled until user takes some
explicit action to open them--but this action could be anything, e.g.
selecting an option from a context menu, pressing a keyboard shortcut,
etc.

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 3:46 PM, Daniel <dani...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Oh and please don't flame me because nothing is 'decided' yet, we are
> just stating our feelings. so the title of "Slidebar deprecation" is
> much more 'certain' sounding than I would advise ;)
>
> - Daniel
>

> On Jan 28, 3:40 pm, Daniel <daniel...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[john]

Thanks for sharing more info. The most important visual features, at
least to me, are:

-- Having space in the browser for my script that does *not* overlay
the web page itself. What would not be acceptable is demoting
extensions to popup panels like Google Chrome did.

-- Being able to adjust the size of my script's screen space. With
slidebars, for example, I can set one width for the default version,
and switch to a wider space if advanced features are enabled.

Overall, Jetpack is great already, so please understand if we
(developers) are nervous about losing a good thing. Thanks again for
info, and keep up the good work.

john

[john]

When I read the initial post, I thought it would lead to a lengthy
discussion of user interface options/alternatives for Jetpack. Even
though that doesn't seem to be the case, I would like to opine
further.

1. The first advantage of the slidebar over something like a door
hanger is that the slidebar doesn't cover or obscure any part of the
web page. I don't want my script's user interface covering the web
page, I want to augment the information in the page. And with everyone
using wide-format screens now, a panel on the left or right side seems
like the ideal real estate for extensions.

2. The second advantage of the slidebar is that it can be kept open
persistently, so that users can view its contents without clicking
anything.

3. If Mozilla is looking for something "slicker and more usable", how
about a side panel that can be expanded/collapsed by dragging the
mouse horizontally, while appearing to rotate in 3-D about the
vertical axis? Perhaps multiple scripts/panels can be accessed cover-
flow style.

4. Finally, just because Google Chrome limits extensions to popup
panels doesn't mean that Firefox has to...