I’ve just committed the basic frame handling functionality to the repo. Frame handling in UC is part of an advanced interaction design which eliminates the need of more windows.
The concept is that the applications is composed of one, and only one window. Why? Because fiddling with tons of windows is not much fun. I heard many people talking about how much burden handling many windows is and I have the same opinion on the issue.
Here is a little demonstration to show you what I’m talking about. Just to make it clear, the file operatons are not implemented yet. Here’s the initial state of UC:
Let’s say the user wants to configure the listing of the right panel. Then (s)he presses the “Set Listing” toggle button on the right panel. Here’s what happens:
As you can see a tabbar and the related tab appears on the left panel frame. There is no overlapping like in the case of an additional window. It’s simple and beautiful.
I’ve made many changes to the codebase in the last few days and I didn’t clean up the code so it’s a bit messy now. Apart from small refactorizations, I guess I overuse accessors a bit. I need to educate myself more on the topic.
As a last note it’s nice to see how friendly the Free Software Community really is. When I requested a logo designer in the help wanted section of SourceForge, I got many help from more people and they were very kind and willing to cooperate. I’ve experienced the same attitude on the GTK IRC channels and mailing lists also.