Bug 96997

The new sidebar (LO 4.4.72) is nice for a particular way of using the screen, but it seems to have messed up my preferred configuration, which is to have the Styles and Navigator both docked on the left-side, one above the other.

Firstly, the sidebar itself uses quite a bit of horizontal screen space. Once I have these two panels docked, I basically never want to use the sidebar, so I would like to have the option of making it disappear. But I can't see a way to do that. Also, the screen is a bit messy, because one of the panels gets a sidebar, and the other doesn't.

Perhaps an improved approach would be allow a *multi-panel* sidebar:
* one button at top of sidebar to hide the sidebar -- while *keeping* the visible panel(s) visible; a menu option or key could be used to unhide the sidebar icons.
* another button on the sidebar to turn on/off *multi-panel view*. in this mode, clicking a sidebar icon would *add or remove* extra panels stacked next to the sidebar, instead of *switching* the panels. A bit like expand/collapse 'twisties' eg in a file folder view.

I think that this revision would be quite powerful; it allows people who want to have several panels stacked next to the sidebar, and it also preserves the new behaviour for people who like it, and also allows the previous sidebarless behaviour since the sidebar can be hidden permanently if the user desires.