[OWBaseWidget] Best way of giving the option to change the width of control area

[loichuder]

When designing Orange widgets, we want to give the opportunity to the user to change the width of the control area (since the forms can be a bit complex). See example below:

Screencast.from.2026-06-04.16-55-49.webm

Unfortunately, the splitter from OWBaseWidget is only a toggle button: it hides/shows the control area but the user can't tune the width of the control area:

Screencast.from.2026-06-04.16-56-46.webm

In essence, I'd like to replace the custom splitter with a regular QSplitter. But the instantiation and the use of the splitter is very internal so it is not easy to do.

I wonder what is the best way to proceed? Could the splitter be made public so it can be changed? Or give the option in OWBaseWidget to have a toggle or resize type of splitter?

[markotoplak]

If you need a special separation in the widget, how about not using control area at all? Is there anything you gain by using the control area as-is? If you need a very custom layout, you could just hide it and use custom layout in the main area.

[loichuder]

Yes, this is what we are doing right now. We were simply wondering if you would like to propose resizable control areas built-in in Orange

If the official solution is to not use the control area and do custom layouting, we can roll with it and you can close this 😉