ADR 0037 — Pane chrome and failure surfaces
Date: 2026-10-12
Status: Accepted for owner visual review
Context
Section titled “Context”The owner found the tabs cheap looking (WM-1). The same review found unnamed plain split panes (WM-15), a hard-coded dark blue foreign-app failure pane (WM-12), and translucent canvas gutters that show the desktop when Mica deactivates (WM-13). These share the shell’s chrome layer. Foreign applications paint above Avalonia, so labels and actions cannot overlap a pane rectangle.
Decision
Section titled “Decision”Horizontal tabs use a 34 DIP, bounded-width row with a clear selected surface, a narrow focus pill, neutral close actions, and fixed add/menu buttons. Overflow has explicit scroll controls. Vertical tabs retain their compact list layout. The toolbar uses icons and tooltips for routine actions; close and rename live in the pane header menu or tab menu. Plain leaves reserve a 28 DIP header in their layout rectangle, including the native-window placement rectangle. A stack’s own reserved tab strip continues to provide its title, so it gets no duplicate header.
The canvas uses an opaque theme brush. The top-level window permits Mica only while active and available, then uses that opaque brush. The foreign-app failure surface uses palette brushes and the saved program’s icon, with explicit Launch new, Open outside WinMux and Close pane actions.
Verification and limits
Section titled “Verification and limits”The local Release app ran with isolated dark and light profiles. Screen captures show horizontal
tabs, two plain split panes, and a failed Character Map pane in both themes. An inactive dark and
light split capture sampled the divider gutter at #1C1C1C and #F3F3F3, respectively; the
runtime log also recorded inactive Mica fallback. The overflow control has a UI test that scrolls
12 tabs at a 480 DIP window width. Native screenshots are attached to WM-1, WM-12, WM-13 and
WM-15 for owner review. The full matrix of nested stacks and foreign apps still needs owner
inspection; these captures are representative, not exhaustive.
What failed
Section titled “What failed”The headless renderer returned no bitmap for a visual assertion, so it could not establish pixel-level acceptance. A native screen capture of this job’s own window replaced it. An initial focus pill was inserted into side tabs too and broke their aligned labels; the existing side-tab test caught it, and the pill is now horizontal-only. A first screenshot also exposed status text overlapping the right-side session field; the left field now has constrained grid columns.