Some apps want to show a sidebar with many different pages or views that can be navigated through tabs.. The mean of navigation of those sidebars is often inconsistent through them and should be unified.
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Notable implementations and proposed implementations are:
# Tabbed QDockWidgets with the tabs becoming icons-only when the text would be elided#
This is default by Skrooge and can be set by the user on Dolphin also.
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##Pros:##
- Very high UI flexibility (tabs/views/categories can be moved around, hidden, added, grouped, torn off and made separate windows, etc...)
- Horizontal text (and optionally icons too)
##Cons:##and icons
- A tabbed QDockWidget tab bar has extreme restrictions on the number of tabs and the length of tabs labels for narrow sidebar narrow widths; too many tabs and too-long strings and the tab bar becomes a mess with tiny tabs and elided strings. If the tabs become icons-only, it would suffer from the same problem in "Small toolbar on the top of the sidebar with mutually-exclusive icons-only toolbuttons or a segmented control"Responsive UI that adapts to the amount of space by showing text in the tabs when there's enough room
##Cons:##
- Would be difficult to have a concept of "Hide the sidebar" since there might not //be// a sidebar: QDockWidgets can be ungrouped and moved anywhere
# Vertical tabs or buttons on the left of the sidebar that can be clicked on to hide the sidebar #
This is what Kate and KDevelop do.
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##Pros:##
- High UI flexibility (they can be moved around, hidden, added, etc...)
- Can accommodate many tabs
- Can easily hide the sidebar without needing to rely on a toolbar button or menubar item elsewhere in the app
##Cons:##
- Dated appearance
- Visually awkward because the user has to read sideways
- No way to hide just the category chooser to save space but keep the sidebar visible (and even if there was, then there would be no visible way to switch the sidebar's current view)
# Combo box on the top of the sidebar that lists its different categories/views #
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##Pros:##
- Horizontal text and icons
- Uses little space and can be integrated into the sidebar itself
- Can accommodate many categories/views
##Cons:##
- Switching categories/views is somewhat slow (requires two clicks or a click-and-drag) on a small click target
- Presence of other categories/views is non-obvious because they're hidden behind the combo box's popup
# Small toolbar on the top of the sidebar with mutually-exclusive icons-only toolbuttons or a segmented control #
##Pros:##
- Each view accessible by a single click
- Uses little space and can be integrated into the sidebar itself
##Cons:##
- No text label; could be hard to tell what the categories are from their icons alone
- Limit on the number of categories that can be shown
# Rejected implementations: #
# Wide sidebar with large icons and text underneath #
**Rejected because having two sidebars side-by-side is weird and takes up too much space**
This is what Calligra and Okular currently do (...in different ways, though). It's also what we do for all settings sidebars.
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##Pros:##
- Attractive when implemented using colorful icons in a KPageWidget with a white background, as in settings windows
- Horizontal text and icons
- Can accommodate many categories/views
##Cons:##
- Uses a lot of horizontal space; feels like too much in conjunction with a second sidebar next to it that displays content
- No way to hide just the category chooser to save space but keep the sidebar visible (and even if there was, then there would be no visible way to switch the sidebar's current view)
# Use collapsible and re-arrange-able headers that are visible all time #
**Rejected because this works best for when you want to see multiple small views, but not for the general case of switching between views**
This is what we want to do for Dolphin's Places panel, see https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=389803 and https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=389803
macOS Finder and ElementaryOS Pantheon Files have this.
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##Pros:##
- Horizontal text and icons
- Can accommodate many categories/views
- Can show multiple categories/views at once
##Cons:##
- Amount of content capable of being shown in each category/view is limited; not suitable for rich views like Okular's thumbnail list
- Would require a bunch of custom code since nothing like this is currently implemented
# Small toolbar on the top of the sidebar with mutually-exclusive icons-only toolbuttons or a segmented control #
**Rejected because this is basically the same as the `QDockWidget` idea when using a responsive design that shows text on;y when there's soom**
##Pros:##
- Each view accessible by a single click
- Uses little space and can be integrated into the sidebar itself
##Cons:##
- No text label; could be hard to tell what the categories are from their icons alone
- Limit on the number of categories that can be shown