[csjava-developer] TheButtonMatrix comments

[Toby D. <tj...@sf...>]

Daryl,

I've been looking at TheButtonMatrix, and I think it's nearly read to 
add to TheMatrix. An essential fix is needed, though:

- The image is not correctly set in the frame. The bottom of the frame 
is too low, and so a gray line is visible. Also, the right side of the 
entire image is apparently covered by the button panel. The image must 
appear precisely in the frame, with no excess space or overlapping.

In addition, there are some possible improvements that would probably 
make it better, although we can live without them:

- The button panel background is big, gray, and unappealing. Can it be 
white instead? Can a method to set the button panel background be added?
- When the button panel is put on the left side of the image, the right 
edge of the buttons is ragged because the buttons are not the same 
width. This looks messy and should be fixed, i.e. the buttons should be 
made the same width.
- After seeing the button panels, I think a menu bar with a menu 
containing the save/load/close features would probably look nicer. For 
beginners, having the buttons right on the screen where they can see 
them is good, because then they don't need to hunt around or guess what 
features are available. But there is so much unused space, that after a 
while I suspect many users will find that to be a bit of an eyesore. So 
a menu bar might be the nicest way to deal with this.
- And speaking of the menu bar, another possibility is to use a 
mouse-click menu, e.g. when the user, say, right-clicks on the image, a 
menu with the save/load/close options would pop up. For frequent users 
of TheMatrix, this might be popular.

I added the file ButtonTest into your developer package on CVS with a 
few more test rungs, including a few comments. I also add the method 
"enableAllButtons" to TheButtonMatrix.

Toby