Menu Strip Drawer in GCF and VTK Designer

A couple of weeks back I got this strange idea for MenuStrip-GCF based UI. I tried it out and tested the results on VTK Designer; to be honest I like it.

MenuStrip-GCF based apps try to keep the number of QActions on the window to a minimum. But sometimes, it might be necessary to provide more options to the user. What do do then? We could for example include a lot of QActions in the menu strip and have the user scroll left or right, or bundle additional options into configuration dialog box or something. For example, consider the script editor component in VTK Designer 2.

Suppose that you wanted to change the font size. Currently the only way to do that is to click Configure -> Script Editor and then change the font size.

How about placing optional widgets under the menu strip so that the user could slide it open? For example

Take a look at the video below.

If you cant see the embedded video player, then click here: http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz_PFXXiX0I

Looks cool isnt it?

If you use the latest version of GCF/VTK Designer you can see this in action. Actually inserting drawer-sheets into the menu strip group is very simple. Just use the following GUIXML

<widget title=”Script Editor Configuration” visible=”false” name=”configPageSheet” />
<group title=”Script” hideWhenInactive=”false” icon=”:/ScriptEditor/scriptingenv.png” name=”scriptMenu” before=”MainWindowComponent.viewMenu” >
  <draweritem widgetName=”ScriptEditorComponent.configPageSheet” />
</group>


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