"Collapse all" button on palettes panel

• Jun 26, 2016 - 08:38

My displayed palettes always grow bigger and bigger as I use various features. Eventually I must close them all (manually) to make things sensible, especially when working on a tablet with no keyboard and thus a need for soft keyboard display area, which competes with the palette display. I wish I had a single 'collapse all' button available. Similarly, I'd like a restore-all/hide-all button for my panels. There may be keyboard shortcus for this but that isn't handy without a keyboard. :)


Comments

Did you notice the 'single palette only' option when right-click on the palette head?
That closes all palettes when you open another, so makes sure only one is open at a time

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Yes, thanks; but like underquark below I generally am working with multiple active palettes. It's just that when I get too many open, things get confusing and I need to shrink them all and start again. I'd rather have the inconvenience of having to close them manually from time to time than having to reopen them EVERY time. But an extra UI widget to reset the palettes would be helpful.

I often like to have two or three palettes open, so not just one and not all. Perhaps allowing each palette itself to have three behaviours - 1]Stay open once opened 2]Close immediately after selection of item from palette 3]Auto-close after x seconds' delay following the last selection.

Whilst doing some transcribing tonight I thought of other possibilities and could imagine using option 2] in particular :

1] Click on a palette to open it and leave it open
2] Hover over the name of a closed palette to open it then have it stay open for a few seconds to allow the selection of an element (by double-clicking in the usual way) then allow selection of another element (if desired) then have it collapse about 5 seconds after the last selection.

In reply to by underquark

Good suggestions above. Note to developers: I now do almost all my MS work on a keyboardless tablet, which means among other things a) no hover, b) awkward soft keyboard, c) difficult for system to choose correctly among click, right-click, and drag. So it's very helpful if behavior that involves hovering or dragging or simultaneous keyboard use can also be accomplished via simple pointer clicks, e.g. via an auxiliary palette or toolbar.

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