Custom Bars and Dockable Bars

[dizzy49]

Regarding the bars. I've seen several requests for more slots etc. Why not "Do It Yourself" Bars? You can create a bar and have it be vertical or horizontal, and you can specify how many slots.

Along with that, instead of just Left Bar, Right Bar. How about dockable bars. You can move them around and have them float, or you can stick them to the side, top, bottom of the screen, or to another bar, etc. Would need to be able to set some level of transparancy with them so you could in theory surround your entire screen with them and still be able to see and use them.

[sarf]

The main reason for not making totally user-configurable action bars is that it is much harder (as in much, much more work) to do them.

However, one issue remains, and it is that the number of action buttons (which the action bars contain) is very limited. Basically, you have 6 bars of action buttons (accessible by the normal action bar) and then you have 4 "extra" bars. These extra bars is used for things such as stances, shapeshift bars et cetera. Thus, if the bars are to remain usable for everyone, the number of slots will have to be limited OR the slots used will have lots of overlap with other, already existing bars. This is the main reason for not making totally configurable bars, since the action buttons the bars would use would have to be somewhat dynamically allocated.

There is also a somewhat minor problem with frames overlapping each other (I'm talking about the very common occurrence that window A is on top of window B, nothing fancy). Basically, the configurable action bars would have to float on top of everything else, possibly obscuring other frames. I do not know what happens if two windows - which both want to be "on top" - gets put on top of one another.

Finally, we have another good reason : allowing people to do lots of interesting stuff (have much control of your application) means that you will have to code/test every possible combination of options. This is actually the hardest part of coding the darn thing, but it deserves to be mentioned on its own.

If you want to, I could make a suggestion in the Bugzilla (an enhancement, to be exact) with a link to this thread. That way, your suggestion would be ensured to have some longevity as well as some Cosmos developer eyeballing it.

By the way, what you're suggesting is really neat and would make the Sidebars/Second action bar obsolete, but it requires massive amounts of coding which is why I am a bit negative, here. :)

Sarf
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[dizzy49]

I've done some coding myself (nothing major), but I do understand the kind of programming time, and testing that would be involved.

Ultimately, I see that the sizable/dock able bars would be a fantastic feature. As you said, it would make the other bars obsolete, and the user would always have exactly what they need, where they need it. It's certainly not something that I'd expect in the next month or so, but it would be nice to have eventually when the full version of WoW is out.

I'd appreciate you posting my suggestion to bugzilla.


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Every great idea came from someone's bad one.

[sarf]

Sure, I'll post it to Bugzilla for ya - just didn't want you to expect things to happen overnight. :)

Oh, the Cosmos bugzilla is being moved to the CosmosUI domain at the moment - please be patient. I'll post a link to the enhancement when it has been moved.

Sarf
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de la Lastra's Law:
After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been removed.
de la Lastra's Corollary:
After an access cover has been secured by 16 hold-down screws, it will be discovered that the gasket has been ommitted.