Sliding Button & Window Specification

Author: Josef Pavlicek

$Revision: 1.10 $
$Date: 2007/03/08 11:07:34 $

$Id: SlidingButtonSpecification.html,v 1.10 2007/03/08 11:07:34 josefpavlicek Exp $ (see full CVS history)

Content

Requirements
New NetBeans behavior and design
The system should support these Use Cases
NetBeans design
Improving of the sliding window appearance
Sliding, docking and dragging effect examples
NetBeans draggers and L&F appearance

Requirements

Motivation

From various Usability Studies and from some blogs we received that more of our users are not able to understand the sliding buttons. We should focus our force for redesign these buttons and behavior of the system after click on them.

Goal

Our goal is redesign buttons and the system behavior according to the users requirements.

NetBeans behavior and design

NetBeans behavior

The system has to give the user information what he does. The system has to show, where is the window located, after the user action. This information has to be easy to understand and "elegant". In this case of slides and hidden window is the best way how to tell the user, what the system does, is show him/her:

minimalization or expansion of the docked or slides window. This minimalization and expansion shouldn't take more than 1,5 second.
shadow (transparent shadow is the best solution) by each sliding window

The system should support these Use Cases:

Auto Hide button Use Case (Figure 7 )
Auto Showing window Use Case (Figure 7 )
Showing hidden window Use Case (Figure 7 )
Dragging of windows (Figure 8)

New NetBeans design

Improving of the sliding window appearance

If the user uses sliding window in NetBeans now, the system shows him sliding window with appearance -Figure 1 .

This window doesn't have:

sliding effect
dragger edge
shadow

Figure 1. Current appearance of the sliding window

To add dragger edge, shadow (transparent shadow if is it possible thanks performance load), sliding effect (Figure 2, 7, 8) is improving in comparison with the current situation.

Figure 2. Model of assembling the new sliding window and its appearance

Figure 3. New appearance of sliding window

The NetBeans IDE should show sliding and expanding effect. For the purpose of this effect the system has to use special windows. These windows have only frame with shadow and white body and header - figure 4,5.

Figure 4. Window for expanding and hiding the left or right column (project, files, etc.)

Figure 5. Window for expanding and hiding the down windows in the tabs(Output etc.)

Figure 6 . Colors of the windows

Sliding, docking and dragging effect examples

These examples show how the NetBeans IDE can support the written Use Cases. These models are running on the never ending loop.

Sliding effect
- The system shows expanding and minimalization effect. This effect shows the user, where is the window located after his/her click.
Docking effect
- The system shows minimalization effect. This effect shows the user, where is the window located after his/her click.
Dragging effect
- The system shows the user new size of his/her window after his/her dragging.

Figure 7. Minimalization of the window on the edge bar

Figure 8. Docking the sliding window - example

NetBeans draggers and L&F appearance

Windows XP

Now NetBeans doesn't have draggers between windows edges Figure 9.

Figure 9. The current appearance of NetBeans IDE

The improve in comparison with the current appearance is that the user is able to better understand, that the edges between the windows are resizable Figure 10. For draggers we will use default size. All draggers are centralized on the edge.

Figure 10. Draggers in NetBeans IDE - draggers have shape of rectangle with five circles

NOTICE: All draggers placed in NetBeans should be taking from operation system. Gray scales are only for information or if the particular operation system doesn't have system draggers.

Figure 11. Appearance of the dragger on Windows XP and gray scale settings.