markey

During the last days I've been working on a new browser-sidebar for amaroK. In amaroK 1.2 we have been using a standard KMultiTabBar in VSNET mode, which means it showed icons by default, and the descriptive text is only shown for the active tab. For quite some time we've been thinking that this solution had some usability issues. The icons were very small and hard to distinguish, and quite often you clicked the wrong tab in the heat of the moment.

Clearly we needed another solution, so I started a series of experimental commits for replacing the KMultiTabBar. We went through QToolBox and KJanusWidget, but both proved to be unsuitable for our needs, namely they use too much valuable screen estate. QToolBox eats a lot of vertical space, while KJanusWidget gets unacceptably wide with its horizontal text.

So we did some brainstorming, and Leinir came up with the idea to go with a modified KMultiTabBar widget. I've imported the source into amaroK and added a custom style with dedicated painting code, along with some other modifications. I'm quite happy with the new solution. We've improved on the original style in several ways:

• All tabs have the same height, evenly spread over the full widget height. Makes it easier to press a tab, looks better and maximizes space utilization.


• The active tab is clearly distinguishable by its highlighted background color.


• A mouseover animation (glowing effect) increases the iCandy level and provides visual cues.

I think it looks quite cool, and it's also more learnable and usable than the old widget.