We are wondering what Deskbar settings people are using. Below are a number of polls that reproduce the relevant Deskbar settings. We may change the defaults according to the results. No worries, no option will be removed so you’ll always be able to customize the default settings to your taste.
Important:
Make sure you’re using a current nightly Haiku (hrev > 53955).
Only those have the improved “Auto-raise” and “Mini-mode” feature, thanks to John Scipione.
If you haven’t tried the new “Auto-raise”, please do so for some time before answering the poll. Chances are, you’ll like it much better now than it was before!
Same goes for the improved single line, compact or “Mini-mode”.
Here we go:
Applications
Sort applications by name
Tracker always first
Show application expander
Expand new applications
Hide application names
0voters
Icon size (count the ‘notches’ of the slider; the far left, “Small” = 1)
So, given the current results, “Tracker always first” is now the default. We’re considering the other results. “Sort applications by name” will probably make it, as well as “Autoraise”, I guess?
Any strong opinions about the application expander? It’s at exactly 50%. Without “expand new applications” I think it doesn’t get too much in the way of anything?
For the icon size, we get only the average, but it seems to be somewhere between 2 and 3 (24 and 32px). This probably should be adjusted according to the font size, too…
Keep in mind that respondents to this poll are only ones that use the forums (and bothered to reply.) We have not surveyed what users actually use, or what they would be opposed to…
IMHO we should leave the default icon size where it is. Anything larger winds up being more “obtrusive” in default installs, or winds up looking strange (if you use it with the application expander.) But yes, if we take font size into account, it may actually be smaller anyway.
I tend to make everything as small as possible (10pt font and all) yet I use 24px icons in DeskBar. I agree anything larger is too large for me, but I think 24px works well. App icons are more easily visible this way.
But I don’t care much since it’s just default settings. So I don’t see why people would oppose to a change here. Whatever we do, there will always be people editing and changing the settings (that’s why we have settings ).
Unfortuntely, I made a mistake when creating the icon size poll. I chose the wrong mode and now we have a useless average instead of discrete votes… I suppose there’s no way to see how many picked which size now?
Of course, one 128px vote would compensate for quite a few 16px votes, but it does seem like people like their icons at least a bit bigger. While I have set 32px myself, I’d suggest to use 24px as default.
Not sure if the percentages of the other options are large enough to make them the default…
I prefer 16x16 icons in Deskbar with expander and expand new applications to keep as many windows items in Deskbar visible as possible. Using bigger icons waste space. Icons can be bigger by default on HiDPI screen. I disagree with dock idea used in Ubuntu or Mac OS X because it don’t allows efficiently manage windows.
I’ve been getting back into Haiku (long live BeOS!) and I prefer the deskbar mode. I don’t really use the other features. I’m curious about the mini-mode but I can’t figure out how to download the nightly build if someone could point towards some directions. Right now, I’m running R1/beta1 (Revision hrev52295+132).
I usually used enlarged traditionnal mode.
In fact, Deskbar takes too much place on themes screenshot (they are only 640*480) so I was dragging it to another corner when I accidentaly tried mini-mode.
Honestly, it is pretty useful if in top right corner and I kinda like it.
A nice addition would be to draw app tabs from the right when you have it on top left corner otherwise despite being small it is always ending covered. Of course, you can slide the tabs but can we ask people to slide tabs on all window that they will open?
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