Request: Clarify the pane collapse/expand controls

[Halstrick]

The last update to the UI changed the “X” to a left-pointing arrow, suggesting that it navigates backwards in the pane’s content rather than closes the pane. That’s good!

But now that leaves us with pane-controls with two left-facing arrows, like this:

It’s not clear to me what one versus the other does, and I still have to stop and think every time.

My suggestion for improving this: change all the “collapse” arrows (which is currently either left- or right- facing, depending on the pane) into thick minus signs ( ), and all the “expand” arrows into plus signs ( ).

[Elissa]

Maybe even better than an arrow would be icons of half-open panes and fully-open panes. I am not good at searching for icons, but I’ll try.

[Tlancaalek]

The + and – icons are well understood everywhere, I think, but it might leave one special case ambiguous: The room picture on the right hand panel has an upward-pointing disclosure triangle to indicate that it affects the image above. A +/- symbol would turn this into a “you just gotta know” scenario.

[Jagrabbit]

Hmm. I feel like this really gets covered by the disambiguation that occurs the moment one looks to the room panel and sees the arrow facing right though?

I have perspective on this one as a graphics application user and I’m very used to seeing arrows on left or right side for hiding toolbars and interface windows. Nearly any complex industry program has these this day, which I accept may be sometimes atypical for some users to be accustom to if they don’t often work with applications that feature this sort of pane/panel collapse functionality.

The arrows/doublearrows are more or less standard in my experience across most applications I use.

[Harcourt]

I think double arrows convey the meaning better. Or even a |< type collapse symbol. Maybe a down arrow? Since that conveys moving something down and out of the way?