Created attachment 169250 [details] Outline of the Extensions sidebar The Tabbed interface has an "Extensions" tab to which extension developers can add buttons to run their extensions (it's still hard to work with, but it's possible). I would like to suggest the creation of an "Extensions" sidebar. The main reason for that is to better organize space and allow to accommodate a greater number of extensions. See the attached ODG file where I outline my proposal. With the current design, the "Extensions" tab can get filled up very quickly if the user install multiple extensions and each extension adds a significant amount of buttons. Today this isn't the case because most developers haven't adopted the "Extensions" tab yet. With the proposed sidebar design, buttons can be better organized "by extension" and virtually there's no limit to how many extensions the sidebar can handle. I would like to highlight that for both the current Extensions tab and the proposed Extensions sidebar to be successful, there needs to be better documentation for developers on how to integrate their extensions in the tabbed interface (and the sidebar, if this proposal gets through).
Sounds like a lot of effort and C++/Java extensions might be able to create own sidebar tabs out of the box, see https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Sidebar_for_Developers
Good example how this works is WollMux https://wollmux.org/
Created attachment 169867 [details] screenshot showing WollMux sidebar I'm attaching a screenshot showing how WollMux integrates into the sidebar; the 3 topmost sidebar decks are from the WollMux extension.
> I'm attaching a screenshot showing how WollMux integrates into the sidebar; > the 3 topmost sidebar decks are from the WollMux extension. Thanks for your reply. I'll look into that.