Summarising the comments on the previous blog entry and my own consideration:
Top-to-Bottom – Users do not want to think about the proper sequence of options. The layout should therefore support the workflow. Top-to-bottom is mostly perceived to fulfill this requirement.
Screen is broader than long – a strict top-to-bottom approach wastes screen space as each element is presented in a new row. Given the number of options in current KDE dialogs and the fact that screens are broader than long, it still makes sense to put related options into a row where appropriate. This should not result in a grid layout – it must be clear that the reading direction is row-wise, not columns.
Indenting is required – We have to decide between indenting or stretching user interface elements. Otherwise normal-sized input widgets will look lost on a broad page. Stretching is something we want to avoid as the relation between label and input element gets lost in some cases (see example below).
Visual indicators support the recognition of relations – for strongly indented or centered layouts, some kind of visual indicator is required that separates group. This may be space, lines or group boxes, or etc. Which ones do you prefer?
Variable indenting – neither a purely centered nor a design with a fixed indent is optimal. A large fixed indent unnecessarily increases the width of a dialog, while a small one makes the right of the dialog look empty (as many KDE dialogs are extremely broad atm). In a centered design, it may happen that the distance between left-aligned group label and options grows too high.
If we could make sure that the width of dialogs does not become larger than, let's say, 600 px in "normal" font sizes, then the indenting would be much less problematic!
Note: This is not the final layout. I'm looking forward to further ideas and suggestions.
Syndicate Blogs
Definite progress
It's very cool what you have done to the lay out of that dialog. It looks "manageable and not scary" now. Bold sections are very good approach. Very cool.
As for "boxing" or just using space and bold section titles:
It not a question of "or" it's a question of "when"
The dialog you presented only has 3 sections. Objects in sections sit tightly together and are clearly distinguished as "clusters" Hence, both lines and boxes just seem to complicate things a lot. If you would have loose "clusters" of elements that do not "appear" together - box them. Once again - unfortunately, you can't really make that a categorical HIG rule, as it's more of a "eye of the designer" thing.
The other approach - make that a box and have users use UI styles that don't render them - the idea sorta suggested by dude plugging Serenity style
Or, have "Do not draw line of boxes, only make box titles bold" option in the default style.
Right-aligned titles are awesome in bringing order. Yet, in cases like "Comment" box, I would rather have title above, than to the left, which would allow for wide text entry field... Where to draw the line, hard to say. But my suggestion - each "box" can have different centering line.