Somewhere I have a "toolbar plugin" that allows other plugins to add/subtract buttons from existing toolbars, or to create their own toolbar, like they do now ..... buggered if I can find it though ... it was a 1.6.x thing

¥

Here's an efficient design example
http://www.bobbyvandersluis.com/articles/unobtrusiveshowhide/example3c.html

I was thinking it would be reasonably efficient if toolbars started as their title with an icon indicating "open" and if you clicked it then you got the full toolbar with a "close" feature. Otherwise they would just sort of stack up next to each other until one finally had to break over into another row. Sort of like how the youtube plugin starts as a button then turns into a toolbar then opens up even more, only different.

No idea how to make it happen though.

Actually wouldn't the whole thing take up more real estate if buttons were in columns instead of rows? But thinking about the page you linked, what if toolbar plugins got put into like a series of tabs and the active tab was the only toolbar you actually saw the guts of? Kinda like:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
smilies -- more tags -- font tags -- VIDEOS -- cc license -- whatever
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Video: [youtube] [google video] [daily motion] [live video] [ifilm]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

============

Hey this is a great downside to having a plugin system that works yah? Like, back in the day you had to hack to make a new toolbar work even though it had hooks, and they were the only hooks in the system. So no one bothered making any toolbars ;)

I'm thinking more about being able to put in a Select drop down list , so for Video it would be
[Select Video format ][V] and if clicked it would show the options....
> Youtube
> Google
> Daily Motion
> LiveVideo
> iFilm

just the same as the Font colour and Font Size options in this form posting screen. This 2 drop down lists give you a combine 19 options, which sure is a lot more efficient than 19 individual buttons

Okay yeah that makes more sense ... more or less.

So each toolbar would need a reasonably short name and reasonably short options so that a couple of them could fit side-by-side? Or are you thinking of not reducing real estate for X number of toolbars; rather getting more bang for the buck out of each piece used?

I'm going to rebuild the moretags plugin now that I learned how to mix php and javascript effectively with an eye towards custom labels for the custom divs, so I'll take a stab at turning the colors into a select menu. IF that is successful then it means more could be jammed onto the same real estate hijacking quicktags and merging all the available buttons into a monstrous bunch of selects.

but first tiny random youtubes is really neat to me so that's my thing for now. Next time I post something and forget what each stupid custom div means I'll get back to that little project ;)

I think anything that can have a drop down list should also be able to share a toolbar
[Video Format|v] [Font Family|v] [Font Colour|v] [Font Size|v] etc etc

It sure would reclaim real estate but a drop down select list isn't always the best UI for some functions.

Okay so like there would be another hook for a toolbar plugin to hook into for plugins that are nice neat dropdowns?

Because yeah for sure the videos plugin would be a perfect candidate for a compact dropdown. Then quicktags and moretags could be packaged as 3 or maybe 4 different toolbars, each of which would be a compacted dropdown.

For a fact some kind of breakthrough is needed for toolbars when posting. I mentally flirted with the idea of using some of the real estate on the right side of the posting window. Thinking if we could swap "details about the post" with "plugins for the post" somehow because really you don't need both of those options visible all the time. Where if you collapse one you automagically open the other? That way someone could take care of all the standard stuff, collapse it and use toolbars when writing the post, then collapse that to make sure all the other options are ready to go before posting.

Anyway something has to give. It's great to have flexibility but the downside is the clutter.

I think I just had a minor miracle.

First, I already made my posting window be 24 rows instead of 16. Actually 32 but I knew I was going to cut that down again, so now it is at 24. But anyway I did a really simple thing: I moved the block of code that puts toolbars above the posting window from above the posting window to on top of the right sidebar box for categories. I also got rid of the minimum height for the categories box because I never did like that.

Wow it's like really nice and friendly back there now. ALL cool clickable stuff is easily accessible without scrolling up past all the toolbars to pop in an emoticon or re-think my title.

- My CC License toolbar sucks on the side because the names in the select box are too long so that won't do for a long-term solution.
- Everything looks all smushed together too much, which is fixable with CSS of course.
- The comments status box should be right under the categories box, and the categories box should lose the informative-yet-space-wasting text.

Overall pretty simple stuff to address I think. The worst of where I'm at is that I will have to hack in a different hook for toolbars on the side because of the CCL thing. Plus I want my emoticons there instead of on the side.

2 new hooks actually: Above (existing hook), Below (because CCL should be at the bottom since that is where most people will insert a license), and OnTheSide which already has a bunch of real estate that just happens to be wasted by the categories box. I'll do some screen caps tomorrow if anyone is interested.