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Zoom widgets

cristian tibirna's picture

In a small poll (or sorta), Albert asks what kind of values are better in the zoom combobox for oKular.

IMO, zoom is best represented by either:
- a slider with major ticks in almost logarithmic scale, going from 10% to (wishful thinking) 10000%, with a spinbox or constrained textedit next to it to show the slider value and allow manual editing
- a zoom out button and a zoom in button (with the classical icons and obeying bidirectional gui guidelines) with a constrained textedit inbetween. Once again, zoom buttons should increase/decrease zoom value almost logarithmically (1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, 1000% etc.)

IN order for these widgets to take lesser space on toolbars, they can be actually hidden and popped up from an unique zoom button ("lens" icon). AmiPro was doing this stuff perfectly 15 years ago.

BTW, such a zoom widget should go in kdelibs and be strongly recommended by the programming guidelines.

Comboboxes are a poor choice (aesthetically and usability wise) for zoom widgets.

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jaroslaw staniek's picture

Start using sliders, start using sliders, start using sliders...

..and I'll add: put them on the status bar, thus saving your toolbar space that is expensive _now_ in KDE4 Eye-wink

cristian tibirna's picture

Good idea indeed

zoom is AAMOF a status information.

superstoned's picture

could you explain what you

could you explain what you mean by
In order for these widgets to take lesser space on toolbars, they can be actually hidden and popped up from an unique zoom button ("lens" icon). AmiPro was doing this stuff perfectly 15 years ago.

you say you want one icon, which pops up the current three widgets, (2 +/- icons and a drop-down)??? it would require more point&clicks, or did amipro have a solution for that? maybe a screenshot? i can't find any...

cristian tibirna's picture

more clicks

In AmiPro it required indeed at least 2 clicks. But we have modern toolkits now and we know how to do "on mouse hover" events. No screenshots. 15 years ago people didn't yet develop the acute apprehension for screenshots that we get today Eye-wink

pipitas's picture

"increase/decrease zoom

"increase/decrease zoom value almost logarithmically (1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, 1000% etc.)"

Isn't that rather called "exponentially"?

(I know the logarithmic is the inverted exponential function, so it's close anyway...)

cristian tibirna's picture

Logarithmic

The QSlider has to be given equally distant intervals as major ticks. If these intervals are the logarithms of the percentage (10,100,1000 etc.) you get 1,2,3 etc as values.

pipitas's picture

loga & expo

Ah, I see.

I thought of "on each equal distance tick, mark percentage value as vertical height" -- and I got an expo function graph Smiling

Guess that's what flows from the "inverse function" thingie. Smiling

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