The synopsis drawer

[David Waern]

2010/8/2 Mark Lentczner <markl at glyphic.com>:
> [I e-mailed this to the haddock mailing list last night - but as of this morning, it still hasn't been resent. Hence, I'm resending, and addressing a few of you directly. Sorry for any duplicate messages that arise.]

I saw your message on IRC, so I checked it out earlier.

> I have built a new look for the synopsis drawer, and changed it from being a "roll over to open" to being a click on tab to open:
>
>        http://www.ozonehouse.com/mark/snap-xhtml/snap-core/Snap-Types.html
>
> You can click the tab again to close it, or just picking an item both scrolls to the item and closes it.

This looks better, but the tab stands out a bit too much visually,
which makes it distracting IMHO. It provokes that "click on me!"
feeling. Do you guys see what I mean or is it just me?

> Some people suggested we try making the synopsis more like the "mini_" pages. I have a rough version of that here (note that the links in this version don't work, it is just for evaluating the look):
>
>        http://www.ozonehouse.com/mark/snap-xhtml/snap-core-alt/Snap-Types.html
>
> For the record, some discussion with various people on IRC last week netted at least one strong opinion that the type signatures in the synopsis (as in the first version) are very helpful in knowing what's what.

Aesthetically, I prefer the mini_-variant, but I can understand if
it's less useful. Perhaps it's possible to get the best of both worlds
with tricks like cutting too long signatures by adding "..." at the
end, experimenting with colours etc.

Like Johan, I'm still a bit sceptical about the whole thing.

David