Regardless, I would still have to move the mouse to the top of the window to get it to expand, right? And if I accidentally mouse off of the window, it collapses immediately, right? I don't see how that's better than an automatically fading transparent palette, where I can always (faintly) see the control I want to adjust and move directly to that part of the palette. And I think a gradual fade-away after I move the mouse back is more elegant and intuitive than an abrupt window collapse.
Well, you're assuming that the roll-up is immediate and happens as soon as the mouse is off the window. If the transparency can be programmed to fade, the roll-up can be programmed to be delayed until a certain time after the mouse is off the window.
Right -- Phil Daley said the timing was user-adjustable, as well. Also, when he first described this, I was thinking it would be more like those annoying javascript(?) roll-down menus on web pages. If it's more like auto-hiding on the OS X Dock, well, that's better -- but the Dock is much simpler than the formatting palette in Office, or even the Finale tool palette. Something Dock-like wouldn't work with two rows of buttons, and it doesn't even work that well with more than, say, seven or eight items in it. (Which is why I don't keep anything in the Dock permanently -- I use DragThing as my launcher, and reserve the Dock for currently running applications only.)
I do have a question: is the gradual fade out something that's provided by OS X's transparency support?
Yes -- I mean, there's support for every level of transparency from 1% to 100%, so it's not hard to build a timer that fades gradually down to a user-defined level. Although as far as I know, MS Office 2004 Mac is the only app to actually implement this feature.
- Darcy
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[EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn NY
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