Change autohide panel default settings ?

[Dylan McCall]

> I suggest 3 change to the default gconf settings:
> 
>   * The unhide_delay is way too slow. For the sake of responsiveness, it 
> should be immediate. I suggest a delay of 0.
> 
>   * Even when unhide_delay is set to 0, the rather slow speed of the 
> animation effect (about 0.5s) still makes it rather unresponsive. I 
> suggest to set enable_animation to 0, unless it is possible to speed it 
> up (not in gconf apparently).
> 
>    * The auto_hide_size default of 6 pixels gives the impression that 
> the panel is stuck half way on its move out of the screen. A small part 
> of the applets and icons are still visible, but unrecognizable. IMO the 
> expected behavior of an autohide feature is that the panel completely 
> disappears, or only draws a line on the border of the screen. My 
> suggestion: 0px or 1px. (which actually behave the same, the panel does 
> not completely hide when set to 0)

I agree completely, Ric! These are almost the same settings I use, too.
One issue is that the hidden panel is almost completely invisible this
way, save for a very slight line, which does hurt discoverability.

It would be kind of cool if a little arrow (placed always below instead
of always on top) appeared in the panel's place. This way, if someone is
just logging in, he is led to the hidden panels fairly easily from his
desktop. I have had a few users become very confused when using my
computer via my user account. (Actually, why doesn't the panel just
lower to the bottom of the stack and rise to the foreground when the
mouse hits the edge of the screen anyway?).
Another possibility would be for the applets to be hidden when the panel
is hidden, which would solve the ugliness we presently see from them
being cut off.

Of course, those ideas are a bit off topic; this is just a configuration
change. On that discussion, I should point out that animation
speed /can/ be changed, though the values are rather odd. It's the
animation_speed key for your selected toplevel, where you have the
choice of "slow", "medium" or "fast". Default is "medium".

Bye,
-Dylan
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