Icons should move out of the way of Deskbar when you move Deskbar

[jscipione]

If you move Deskbar from one position to another, if there are any desktop icons underneath Deskbar's new position, those icons should be automatically moved out of the way for the user.

An easy way to accomplish this would be to send Tracker a message on MouseUp() (at the end of a drag) telling Tracker to perform a cleanup of the Desktop.

A more sophisticated message could be sent to Tracker to inform it of Deskbar's current screen coordinates and position so that Tracker could move the icons out of the way more intelligently.

[jscipione]

Example showing some icons that got convered when Deskbar was moved.

[anevilyak]

FYI, the more sophisticated message isn't really necessary: the BDeskbar class (interface/Deskbar.h) already lets you query the deskbar's current location and frame, so all Tracker would need to know is that it was moved. It would probably be even better to make this mechanism general purpose such that any app could be notified by extending BDeskbar to allow one to watch for position changes, passing in a BMessenger to which to send the notifications.

[pulkomandy]

I don't agree. Moving the deskbar around shouldn't mess up with my carefully handcrafted icon layout :).

[jscipione]

Replying to pulkomandy:

I don't agree. Moving the deskbar around shouldn't mess up with my carefully handcrafted icon layout :).

The simple solution, just calling cleanup on the desktop would mess up your carefully handcrafted icon layout, but, we could do better and just move the icons enough to get them out of Deskbar's way without messing up the overall layout.

Icons shouldn't be under Deskbar if we can avoid it.

[siarzhuk]

The "problem" is sucked from the finger. BeOS UI is perfect and need no improvements.

[pulkomandy]

Replying to jscipione:

Replying to pulkomandy:

I don't agree. Moving the deskbar around shouldn't mess up with my carefully handcrafted icon layout :).

The simple solution, just calling cleanup on the desktop would mess up your carefully handcrafted icon layout, but, we could do better and just move the icons enough to get them out of Deskbar's way without messing up the overall layout.

... which would move them on the other side to "out of screen". Even more annoying. If I want to clean this up, I'd rather either do it manually, or use alt shift K which does a good job already (but onl when I mean it). I use dekbar in expando mode and I do have icons under it when there are a lot of apps open and it reaches the bottom of the screen, but that's how I want it to work. These are icons I use for quick app access when the apps aren't already open and the deskbar is still small.

[axeld]

I think the same mechanism should be used that is currently avoiding that icons are out of the current screen bounds. The base idea is "non destructive" here: if you change the resolution back, or in this case, if you move the Deskbar back into place, the original icon positions should be restored. The same should be done for replicants on the Desktop. This would also allow for live "out of the way" updating of the icons while you're moving the Deskbar/replicant around.

Besides that, how often do you rearrange your Deskbar that you could possibly be annoyed by such a feature, pulkomandy?

On a different related point, I think we should give Tracker some auto-arrange-icon modes anyway - that aren't just triggered on demand as it is now, but ignore any stored icon position.

[axeld]

Replying to pulkomandy:

I use dekbar in expando mode and I do have icons under it when there are a lot of apps open and it reaches the bottom of the screen, [...]

That's a good point actually that I missed before. Maybe only the base frame of the Deskbar should be taken into account, or that feature should only be enabled in the auto-arrange modes. And even then, it should spare the whole theoretical area Deskbar could reside on - having the icons jump around because you use the team expander would be pretty annoying.