The UI Faces
|
Jirka Mzourek
January 24, 2001 -- first draft
May 11th, 2001 - updated version |
Problem
This new feature have to solve three main problems:
-
Accessibility (Section 508 of the U.S. Federal Rehabilitation Act):
There are many types of disabilities: color blindness, poor vision, lack of
vision, etc. (Please see the accessibility page for details.) Users with
different disabilities need different settings for UI properties such as color, font, etc.
For details go on our accessibility
page. We plan to have predefined settings for every type of this kind of users.
-
Predefined/Custom UI Configurations:
Laptop users need different UI settings than workstation users. Different users will have different tastes, and will want different UI configurations.
-
Settings integration:
Changing UI settings may require hunting through several dialogs. For example, browser font settings are in one dialog; editor font settings are in another dialog, and IDE font settings are in still another dialog.
There are links to related mails from discussion on nbdev:
Conceptual Overview
The core of this proposal is to gather UI settings from across the IDE, and to
collect them into a single dialog.
The UI settings under consideration are:
-
The IDE's Metal Theme (see: doc.)
-
The Editor's fonts/color settings
-
Menus
-
Toolbar
-
Substitution for command line switches (font size, L&F) (for example: -fontsize or -ui)
-
Default tabbed pane style
-
MDI/SDI mode
-
Accessibility settings
Tasks and Product Features
Common Task:
User opens appropriate dialog.All settings should be accessible in one
dialog, I can imagine on separated tabs. User create changes, some will
take effect only after restart IDE (JLF, font size), so in this case will
be warned by message. Close dialog, changes will take effect.
User Type:
-
Every user of NetBeans.
-
Module developer -- needs to be able to add his settings.
Restrictions/Limitations
The IDE have to be restarted to some changes take effect (change Look and
Feel).
