Have you tried the splitter out yet? What do you think, was it easy to use and understand? If you haven't used it yet - give it a whir and let me know what you think.
Also, did you find the common splitter templates useful in the samples browser? Have you tried multiple pane splitters - what are your thoughts?
Geoff, Devin:
Using the splitter to get rid of framesets is a great use because we all know frames are evil! :)
One possible use I can see for it now is if you have a vertical menu on the left side of a web page (one of our sites does have this). You could use it to adjust the width of the menu to allow users to see more of the content on the right half of the splitter. Which is exactly what you've done in the samples browser. DUH!
Is there a way to have the content resize automagically based upon the position of the splitter? Try this. Start the samples browser and look down at the bottom of the browser. On my monitor (1024x768) there's a horizontal scroll bar. If I close the menu by clicking on the splitter arrow the scroll bar goes away. When I open the menu again I get the scroll bar. Is there a way to change the width of the div on the fly?
Zack:
Just to clarify, are you specifically asking about a use case for changing to split orientation in an application like the demo shows, or general splitter use cases?
If its the former, then you are right, I am not sure that dynamically changing the orientation of a splitter is something we consider a mainline use case, and the same is really intended to simply show the fact that you can have a splitter oriented either vertically or horizontally. We may need to go back and review the sample to see if it needs modification.
If its the latter, than I think Geoff gave a pretty good example. Other examples are sites like the online MSDN documentation, or any site that currently is using frames.
Devin
One area I see it being useful is in replacing Framesets in sites. I'm currently working on overhauling a site that has several framesets nested inside of each other that is several years old. Using the WebSplitter I've been able to accomplish the same look using two WebSplitters nested together. The added collapse and expand functionality is also nice since the current site uses some very old code that isn't always browser compatible for collapsing and expanding the frames. Lastly, it is allowing me to hide areas that I don't want users to see when the page first loads, and then open that area once it is relevant.
I tried the sample and think it's cool you can toggle between horizontal and vertical splitters but I don't see a use for it yet on any of the sites I've worked on. How did you guys envision we'd use it?