[Geany-Devel] Plugin manager interface

[Colomban Wendling]

Le 24/04/2014 07:07, Thomas Martitz a écrit :
> Am 24.04.2014 03:26, schrieb Colomban Wendling:
>> Again, I don't particularly like the "all embedded, fat dialog" design,
>> and again, most of the plugins simply want to display a web page.  And
>> no, we won't depend on a web rendering engine for this, sorry.
>>
>>> Any suggestions?
>> Do something simple, not Eclipse.
>>
> 
> What is simple for you, then?
> 
> I would argue the current design is fat, as it is 3 distinct dialogs.
> And it is overly unintuitiv:
> * Managing plugins is at one place
> * Managing their settings is at another place
> * Except for the keybindings which are at yet another place

All three are accessible from the Plugin Manager dialog, the buttons are
here for this.

I agree that there are some imperfect things, like that navigating the
plugins from inside the Plugin Preferences dialog is suboptimal (not
sure how to fix it, apart maybe removing the dialog and going through
manager->preferences).

The keybindings could, perhaps, gain from being isolated from an
aesthetic POV, but it would heavily decrease usability when it comes to
handling conflicting keybindings.  What do you do, ask for what to do
about a keybinding NOT in the displayed list?

> I really like the design proposed here, and it aligns with my idea of
> simple, clean and user-friendly.

If we really wanted an all-in-one thing, I'd rather see something
dropping less all the (useless) info at the same time on the user, maybe
like https://gist.github.com/b4n/fe508350c92456959e32
(http://b4n.netlib.re/misc/geany-pm-dialog-mockup/)

> PS: Why would most plugins want to show a web page, knowing that the
> user can only visit it in a external web browser? If I was a plugin
> author (sometimes I am) I would avoid a web page for that reason alone.

I guess, mostly because it's simpler.  Most people just link to their
general howto/docs, that since is also made to be on website is written
in HTML or similar.  And bringing a web view to display this inside
Geany does not really sound like a great option.
Maybe people could rather install "real" help files like devhelp or
alike, but this would still be opened in another app (here, the help
browser) -- like most apps do.

Regards,
Colomban