Created attachment 199883 [details] Screenshot of an already implemented vertical tabs dialog for Page styles In version 25.2.1.2, I discovered (much to my delight) that the "Page Style" dialog uses vertical tabs (i.e. on the side of the dialog) 10 tabs, which looks a million times better than the other "too many tabs" dialogs like: * "Paragraph" properties * "Image" properties * Probably many others Screenshots attached. I'd like to request those other dialogs to be harmonized to use vertical tabs when there are more than 5-6 tabs, because this is much easier to read and interact with than multiple rows of variable-width tabs.
Created attachment 199884 [details] Screenshot of the Image properties dialog with multiple rows of horizontal tabs
Created attachment 199885 [details] Screenshot of the paragraph properties dialog with multiple rows of horizontal tabs
The Vertical Tab implementation only came in at 25.2, with some issues of consistency in the UI handling of the VerticalTabControl() and the legacy TabControl() that have required roll-back and more measured progress. In general the vertical tab bar layouts are more comfortable than the shifting horizontal tab bar motif, make better use of available screen space. But we can not only consider GTK (gtk3/gtk4), impact and appearance on the vcl backends for other DE (gen, win, macOS, kf5/kf6) have to be considered as UI dialogs are migrated to vertical tab layouts. Expect ,oving more of the dialog layouts to vertical tabs will proceed, but incrementally.
Yes, the plan was to have VT for all dialogs but with icons similar to the hyperlink dialog. Unfortunately, it looks good on gtk3 but not on any of the other VCLs. We kept it on the PgS dialog to "push ourselves" working on the topic. But I don't see improvements. Keep track of the META ticket and in particular bug 161491 about the progress. This request is essentially the same as in bug 99528. Suggest to make it a duplicate and reopen (or vice versa).
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 99528 ***
Please write a new bug for each dialog that needs converting. That allows to keep track of the work still to be done, and allows to deal with regressions individually. Bug 99528 is too big already.
(In reply to Samuel Mehrbrodt (allotropia) from comment #6) > Please write a new bug for each dialog that needs converting. Before this effort is done we should solve the blocker. There is bug 163008 (with a recent screenshot) and bug 16150 about icons and proper feedback/design. There is also bug 165474, but in this case a bit unclear. And if we do VT everywhere it requires redesign on many dialogs/tabs. See for example bug 161491, bug 161492, and other.
If you ask me, vertical tabs are not "ready for prime time", at all. It has serious kinks, like bug 165474 and bug 165989; and beyond that - it's... an "anti-usability" interface, at least with GTK3: It looks like a plain vertical list of labels, not like tabs you could pull on on press or manipulate. Not to mention you have no visual indication of where one tab ends and another begins. But - I buy the uniformity argument here. Which is why my suggestion is doing the _opposite_ of the ask here, i.e. I want to see us switch back to horizontal tabs on _all_ dialogs, at least with GTK3, for now. I'll take the hit in screen real-estate against the sense of "blech" I get from the vertical tabs. If and when vertical tabs are properly implemented - on the GTK side and on our side - then I might support this. I will stress I don't know how much of what I've written applies to other VCL backends.
We discussed the topic in the design meeting. It might be currently out of scope but keeping this VT design as a goal makes sense.