prefs window needs a scoll bar

[Bjoern Koch]

The prefs window may be bigger than the hight and/or the width of the available screen size (or the available size of the workspace). In this case the "close" button can not be accessed anymore.
Even though the desklet's author should have an eye on the amount of entries or pages, gDesklets should supply scroll bars (if needed).

[Christian Meyer (chrisime)]

IIRC, the prefs dialog is using gdesklets' ADL/widgets. We don't have scrollbars there.

[Bjoern Koch (h.humpel)]

But all the widgets are packed into a gtk.Notebook (AFAIK), at least if there is one "page".
Can't we just add the scrollbar(s) to this Notebook ?

[Christian Meyer (chrisime)]

AFAIK, GNOME's HIG says that there shouldn't be any scrollbars in a dialog. IMHO, it's bad design to have them. We could allow having a particular amount of elements in a notebook. It isn't a problem at all, If you add an additional notebook. Is it?
Most users have a resolution of 1024x768 and you can make sure that everything fits (width and height of a prefs dialog).
I don't wanna say that I'm totally against having scrollbars, but it simply isn't necessary.

[Bjoern Koch (h.humpel)]

Pushing this one up again as we need an agreement here, too.

This seems to be some kind of general layout problem.
Adding too many notebooks causes the same problem (just the other direction) and the buttons may be unaccessable, too. At least in this case the user can still grab the window and move it around (which can't be done if the window gets to big in height).

[MarioGonzalez (gonzalemario)]

Have you got a "visual example" why we should add a scrollbar to the prefs dialog? Agreed with Gnome HIG.

[Bjoern Koch (h.humpel)]

More or less... it's been a long time ;).
Anyway, AFAIR this happens e.g. when you are running any SideCandy desklet on a 800x600 screen (on a Gnome system). The SideCandy menu is simply too big and the top and bottom panels are covering parts of the window.
Otherwise you can simply "blow up" any config window to see the effect. And as this affects both "directions" (horizontal and vertical) you are basically limited in the amount of configuration elements a desklet can provide (depending on the size of the screen or chosen resolution etc.).
Worst thing that can happen is that you cannot see and reach (with the mouse) the buttons on the bottom AND the window title anymore. So IMHO it would be a good idea to have some kind of "just for the worst cases scenario" scrollbars, even if they would be non-HIG.
It simply seems to be some kind of "un-predictable" for a desklet developer to make it fit in "by default" as there are too many variables out there (resolution, font sizes, themes, panels etc.).
SideCandy 0.20 will use the ConfigToggle element so save space, but there are more desklets out there causing this kind of trouble.