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:
- **Make each view a# Tabbed QDockWidget and group them all together by default**. dgets #
This is default by Skrooge and can be set by the user on Dolphin also.
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- Pro: v##Pros:##
- Very high UI flexibility (theytabs/views/categories can be moved around, hidden, added, grouped, etc...)
- ##Cons: a##
- A tabbed QDockWidget tab bar becomes unusable with more than 2 tabs at narrow widths that would need to be fixed this via an UI change;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. wThis 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 since: QDockWidgets can be moved anywhere and ungrouped.
- **Let user navigate through vertical tabs on
# Vertical tabs or buttons on the left of the leftsidebar that can be collapslicked on click**. to hide the sidebar #
This is what Kate and KDevelop do.
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- Pro: high##Pros:##
- High UI flexibility (they can be moved around, hidden, added, etc...), can be collapsed
- 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: disliked (because people can't read sideway?)
- **Let user navigate through big square buttons on the left with big icon and horizontal text undernith**.##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). though)It's also what we do for all settings sidebars.
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- Pro: easy to use##Pros:##
- Attractive, horizontal textespecially when implemented with colorful icons in a KPageWidget with a white background, icons help, customizable size, can be collapsedas in settings windows
- Horizontal text and icons
- Can accommodate many categories/views
- ##Cons: uses##
- Uses a lot of horizontal space
- **Use a combox on the top**; 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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- Pro: has horizontal text and icons, lots of options would take little vertical space##Pros:##
- Horizontal text and icons
- Uses little space and can be integrated into the sidebar itself
- Can accommodate many categories/views
- Cons: no obvious way to collapse sidebar without having to rely on application's toolbar, slow to switch categories##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 #
- **Use a toolbar on the top**##Pros:##
- Each view accessible by a single click
- Uses little space and can be integrated into the sidebar itself
- Pro: each view accessible by a single click##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
- Cons: no obvious way to collapse sidebar without having to rely on application's toolbar, no text labelmacOS Finder and ElementaryOS Pantheon Files have this.
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- **Use collapsable headers visible all time** (used on dolphin places panel? could not find it)##Pros:##
- Horizontal text and icons
- Can accommodate many categories/views
- Can show multiple categories/views at once
- Pro: has horizontal text and icons, allow to show multiple views at once
- Cons: no obvious way to collapse sidebar without having to rely on application's toolbar,##Cons:##
- Amount of content capable of being shown in each category/view is limited; slow to switch categories, wnot suitable for rich views like Okular's thumbnail list
- Would require a bunch of custom code since nothing like this is currently implemented