The Sidebar is considered as an addition to the toolbar but for the amount of very different stages it has to be confusing for most if not all users. We have: • Off – no Sidebar at all • Minimized – just the gray square • Symbols only – just Sidebar-settings and tab-icon after clicking the X • Open – showing current tab-icon • Undocked – whole Sidebar is hovering atop of the main-window Should we remove some of these stages?
This idea is related to bug 114506 and bug 95347 requesting the initial state across or per module to be minimized. Personally I dislike the close function in minimized state. The tiny button looks like it opens the sidebar but collapses even further. I would remove the "minimized" state and make the hide/show button toggle the sidebar to the default width and the minimized width (icons visible). This requires also a way to get into this state meaning reducing the width below the deck minimum.
We discussed this topic in the design meeting. From the minutes: + collapsed state is an acceptable minimum; + can we remove the hide button "panel"? (and by this the fully collapsed state) + clicking the tab button expands/collapse the panel to the minimum state + makes the various functions more consistent (closing the tab or clicking the tab button has the same result being collapsed + impacts the minimized state while in (at least) tabbed notebookbar mode + needs to be changed into the collapsed mode + removing the hide button might kill the splitter functionality that allows resizing of sidebar; needs to take care To summarize, we recommend to remove the minimized state (only the small hide button is shown) because this has very little benefit but adds a lot of inconsistencies. When doing this the Notebookbar has to be taken into account (should be collapsed instead of minimized) and removing the minimize button must not affect the ability to resize the sidebar.
I can remove the gray small "button" and update the notebookbar setting, but I can't remove the code which do the thing. Should I? but than there is some non used code somewhere?
(In reply to andreas_k from comment #3) > Should I? but than there is some non used code somewhere? Would prefer a surgical clean cut. Hiding the button is a bad solution.