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 #
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, etc...)
##Cons:##
- A tabbed QDockWidget tab bar has extreme restrictions on the number of tabs and the length of tabs labels at narrow widths; too many tabs and too-long strings and the tab bar becomes a mess with tiny tabs and elided strings. This would need to be fixed this via some type of UI change.
- Would be difficult to have a concept of "Hide the sidebar" since there might not be a sidebar: QDockWidgets can be moved anywhere and ungrouped
# 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
- If hidden entirely, there is no visible way to switch the sidebar's current view
# Wide sidebar with large icons and text underneath #
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, especially when implemented with 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 sidebar next to it
- If hidden entirely, there is 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
# Use collapsable and re-arrange-able headers that are visible all time #
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