oh, this is a good idea: I also had the panel on the right for some time, which was quite good IMO, but not as good as having it on the top. Everything was reachable with the stylus very well. But some widgets on the pandel didn't display nicely, e.g. the clock. Hence I dropped that idea again. But you're right, the poll should contain those options and I should provide some screenshots so that the readers can imagine how it looks like.
I'll see if I can create screenshots tonight.
Having the panel on the right or left optimizes the available screen height, which is good for working on documents (because mostly height is more imprtant than width for applications such as text processors, spreadsheets etc.).
In fact, I have the panel on the side on all my other computers, too. Windows at work: on the right; Mac at home: on the left.
Strange that I dnd't hink of it anymore for the Pandora panel. ;-) I have added those poll options now.
Askarus, sorry, I tried to make the poll as non-influencing as possible (because I am aware that I tend to do this when I have a strong opinion myself).
Yes, I think the current panel is
not optimized for efficient touchscreen / stylus use, and no, I did
not say that you don't use it efficiently. When we met, I have seen how amazingly efficiently you use the Pandora. Really impressive. And for you and probably for others, who use their Pandora as efficiently already (being very much used to the current XFCE configuration) it would problaby really be a bad thing to change the configuration significantly. It would not make sense to force users like you to use a new user interface, that decreases their efficency.
And in case you didn't notice: I also mentioned the
disadvantage of user confusion for the optimized panel: "Conservative, as in SZ1.54 - keep it as it is and don't add confusion". I just added "experienced users keep their familiar environment." I hope that's good enough for you now.
Imagine, if Google and Apple didn't optimize user interfaces for their tablet or smartphone OSes. The DOS-driven HP 200LX, that I used for a long time, did not have the stock DOS interface, also not one of those common DOS desktops, but also an interface optimized for the device, considering the special screen size, format and resolution, the F keys, some special keys etc.
Those devices would never have such a big success on the market without their user interface adaptions. I really see potential here, to convince more users to switch to the Pandora, if there is a really optimized user interface. MiniMenu is one approach, suitable for gaming, but for work, XFCE is the tool of choice. But stock XFCE is optimized for desktop computers with a mouse and large screen. We usually don't have a mouse and we have a small screen. That requires different priorities.
My poll may be bad, but with your very strong expression of your opinion ("side is even worse", "
It has to be on the bottom. Pandora button has to be left. Show Desktop has to be right.") you're not helping much either. It's simply wrong. Those elements don't have to be where you say they have to be. If they had to, XFCE and many other desktop environments would not allow them to be configured otherwise.
I very much like to experiment in that field and find new ways of operating a computer, that require less complicated interaction with the device to achieve quick and good results.
I see that this question splits the users into two groups. That leads me to the assumption that the user should really have a choice. Two pre-configured panel variants, and a dialog letting the user switch between a "experienced user; conservative layout" and a "new layout, probably needs time to get used to, but may increase efficiency".
Maybe we can even introduce some simple "theming" support:
Create a directory /etc/xdg/xfce4_presets/ as the container for some /etc/xdg/xfce4 content tarballs, and a simple bash+zenity script that lets the user choose one of those tarballs, unpacks it to /etc/xdg/xfce4 and restarts XFCE. Then, there can be a few configurations, that the user can easily try out and choose the one that suits him best.
Ideally, that script also would have an option to save the current configuration under a user-specified name, so the user can save his custom configuration and get back to it later.
I can gladly provide such a script. Should not be too hard to implement, even for me. ;-)
