Created attachment 107971 [details] Both panels are open, each one has cut-off content, and there is no visible separator If you turn on both the Places and Folders Panels, they become separated by a resizable handle that lets you choose how much space to allocate to each one. However, this handle is invisible, which causes two issues: 1. There is no visual separation between the panels, making them blend into each other. It looks especially weird when items of one are cut off (see screenshot) 2. Users are not visually clued into the fact that there is a resize widget there that allows them to adjust the size of each panel
There is a visible separator when the panels are unlocked, but I think it's desirable to have one when locked as well, for the aforementioned reasons.
This can be fixed-ish by removing or commenting out setFeatures(QDockWidget::NoDockWidgetFeatures); in dolphindockwidget.cpp. That has the side effect of also drawing other borders, but maybe that's okay.
Ah I see the problem. The borders only appear when the Dock widget has the property QDockWidget::DockWidgetMovable. We want a state where it has borders but isn't movable.
I see now. The appearance is done in QStyle, which comes from Breeze. With the Oxygen theme, there is a visible resize handle there when the panels are locked.
Created attachment 107974 [details] Before: Two panels are open, each one has cut-off content, and there is no visible separator ...And that's a user-configurable setting: System Settings > Application Style > Widget style > Breeze > Configure > Frames > Draw frame around [stuff]
Created attachment 107975 [details] After: each panel is clearly its own separate entity, and cut-off content is clearly inside a scrollable view
Created attachment 107976 [details] Before: side panel with no border in Dolphin settings window Side panels have the same issue, although it's more aesthetic than usability-related.
Created attachment 107977 [details] After: side panel with aesthetically pleasing border in Dolphin settings window
Created attachment 107978 [details] Before: side panel with no border in System Settings
Created attachment 107979 [details] After: side panel with aesthetically pleasing border in System Settings
Submitted a patch: https://phabricator.kde.org/D7957 Most of the attachments on the bug report depict older versions, FWIW. Newer pictures using git master are available at the Phabricator patch.
There are two options in breeze configuration that are named "draw frame around dockable panels" and "draw frame around side panels" that do exactly what you want.
Yep! And I'm advocating making that the default setting, for the reasons I stated in the Description (I'm dropping Side Panels from this discussion to focus on the usability issues arising from omitting frames from Dock widgets by default).
So like in phab, I disagree with changing the default. I think this dolphin case is quite a corner case, that should not justify that _all_ dock panels get a frame around them (in most cases you only have one dock panel per side, and so there is no issue) For the sidebar pannel, that is completely unrelated
Okay, so we don't have to draw all borders by default. But we should draw *something* to separate these views in order to overcome the issues I've highlighted.
drawing borders would be a significant step back in looks. the issue has a point, things that get cut off into nothing are not good either. in qwidget apps i didn't see it in other places so perhaps is a problem not common enough, otherwise a single line could be drawn on top and/or on bottom only when the contents and position justifies so
is this still relevant?
Yes, it's the same issue as the invisible qsplitter problem.