Panel show/hide buttons and related commentary

[psychoadept]

Unless it causes a problem to have Playing Track info show up in both the bottom panel and tabs, I think the show/hide button for the panel should be permanent just like the left, right, and library explorer buttons.  I keep getting confused when it goes away, and I *know* how to get it back.  At least maybe it could start available like the other buttons, and be hidden if that section is moved to a tab?

Edit: Okay, now I've discovered that there is a very obscure way to make the left panel button disappear, via context menu.  Maybe that should be taken out, too?

Edit again: Tangential, but equally problematic.  Having switched the right sidebar into a floating window, there's no clear way to send it back to the right sidebar.  *facepalm*  Of course the X button does it.  Was so used to arrows and right click menus that I missed the obvious.

On the other hand, the floating window doesn't seem to keep the same components as the sidebar.  Lyrics become hidden, and now playing list shows up even if the reverse is true in the sidebar.

[Steven]

could you post a screenshot as i dont know what you mean

[psychoadept]

Here you go!



The button circled at the bottom is what I was originally referring to, which I would like to have shown by default. 

Then I discovered the existence of the menu shown, and the fact that selecting Hidden for the left panel causes the left show/hide button to disappear, which doesn't really make sense to me.  Hiding the panel, sure, but why take away the button?  And why give it a menu entry when you can use the button?

The location of the menu didn't make sense to me at first, either, but I finally figured out that it's because you can configure that separately for each tab.  Although I still think it would be better attached to the left panel, with something in the menu like "Disable (this tab only)".

Totally unrelated, but my ideal content for the bottom panel would be the slideshow as in the screencap, with the spectrum visualizations from the details tab.

And I've discovered a couple of problems which I'll take to the bug forum.