[sugar] scrolling the journal list view (was Re: alt-tabbing to the Journal)

[Gary C Martin]

On 11 Oct 2008, at 11:34, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 5:27 PM, Eben Eliason  
> <eben.eliason at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 3:26 AM, Gary C Martin  
>> <gary at garycmartin.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> - Realtime scrolling so you can just grab, drag, and look as it  
>>> goes past.
>>
>> Indeed.  I have never been satisfied with the row-by-row scrolling,
>> but we couldn't do better in terms of performance before.  In
>> redesigning the Journal, it was very important to us (to me, at the
>> very least) that smooth pixel-scrolling was part of the plan. Tomeu,
>> do you think we can make a transition like this for 9.1?  I think it
>> would be another big boost to using the Journal.
>
> Sure I think we should do something for 9.1, but right now the
> resourcing part is a bit complex. Maybe Scott can comment on this?
>
>> The main problem here is potential length of the scrolling page.  Its
>> unbounded, except by space constraints, right now.  There are two
>> viable options here that we've talked about.  First, we could
>> introduce the notion of paging, so that after scrolling to the bottom
>> of a page in the Journal, you have (older) and (newer) buttons to get
>> to other results.
>>
>> Second, and my preference, we could introduce temporal section
>> headers.  After scrolling far enough back in time, there might be
>> sections for each month, and further back, for each year, etc., with
>> each section being represented by a header only, and a disclosure
>> button.  Clicking on a section would open it inline, closing the
>> currently open section, thus keeping everything in the Journal
>> temporally ordered on a single "infinite" page, but allowing one to
>> dive into it in any range of time.
>
> Yes, I like this idea and I think it's pretty much doable.

Yes, I do like this. This also resolves the issue as found in regular  
desktop UI controls (and current Journal implementation), for where  
you have long a document and try to use the scroll-bar for navigation  
– the longer the page the smaller the scroll-bar, the more sensitive  
it's movement, and the harder it is to navigate in a controlled,  
refined manner.

--Gary