[chimera-dev] volume viewer features/suggestion

[Tom Goddard]

Hi Matt,

  Ok, I've made an enhancement request to visually indicate divisions between the different volume viewer dialog panels. 

	http://plato.cgl.ucsf.edu/trac/chimera/ticket/12201

Currently the "x" for closing each panel is the only visual indication of the divisions.  I tried horizontal lines between the panels long ago and it looked even uglier than without lines and I thought it was generally less usable with those lines.

  The panels appear in a fixed order.  It was done that way to reduce confusion -- so you know where a panel will appear relative to other panels.  Another idea would be to always add a new panel at the bottom.  I don't think that is as easy to use.  The whole design with panels popping up that increase the size of the dialog is bizarre, not done in other applications.  Usually tabs would be used or separate dialogs.  We will likely be doing something more sensible in the next generation of Chimera using the Qt toolkit instead of Tk.

	Tom


On Jul 8, 2013, at 3:27 PM, "Dougherty, Matthew T" wrote:

> I have starting using feature display as my default setting, putting in other features depending on project and available display space.
> 
> when selecting a feature it can be difficult to get a handle on what is being presented; the window expands or reduces, feature blocks are being inserted/deleted throughout the dialog.
> 
> would suggest a horizontal black line separating the feature blocks, to make the visual grouping easier to pick out.
> or a vertical line down the left using color to differentiate feature groups.
> 
> 
> Matthew Dougherty
> National Center for Macromolecular Imaging
> Baylor College of Medicine
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