Re: [Usability] Usability Digest, Vol 33, Issue 9

["Ethan Anderson" <ethana2 gmail com>]

Ok- keep posts on list, use pictures to illustrate concepts on a page somewhere.  Repost idea onlist and complete.

Here's a few pastes:

I'm saying that I think that this segment of the window, that is the
part with all the buttons and text fields, should be handed over to
some kind of DE controller and library.  That is, Apps should not
render their own windows.  Nor should they ever render to the screen.
They should have distinct threads that are called by the DE to render the document frame and pass parameters to the centralized menu renderer and such.

Essentially: I'm saying this: instead of an application calling a graphical library function, the graphical environmental should call a part of the app.  Thus, if the graphical environment supports tabs, one code segment will handle open office, Firefox, and the GIMP.  All can have tabs.  Even media players.  Like, say, playing instrumental Japanese music and waterfall sounds at the same time.  This would also work for visual themes and features like autosave and text copying and stuff.


Imagine this:
A user is reading a long web page.  There is only one frame on screen-
the actual page, and the scroll bars.  The user moves his/her mouse to
the top or bottom of the frame, and an entire slew of options becomes
visible.  I think that separating windows by their components could
make for a variety of interesting possibilities.  Or this: Someone's
typing something.  They have some transparency behind the document, but
the controls portion of the window is completely opaque.

Or maybe this:

A person has two tabs in Firefox, but
they wish to see them at the same time.  So they open one, and drag it
onto the desktop, where its frame just sits there.  When they select
it, the top (or bottom) of the previous window disappears, and appears
again above the selected frame.  After not being used for a few
seconds, it auto hides.  This could reduce visual noise, and give an
elegant finish to a desktop environment.

Really, it's an extension of the idea of using tabs in the first place, if you think about it.  You might even have a control panel on the desktop that switches contents as you switch windows.  Click the 
OO.o frame, and voila- this frame has formatting options.  Select FF, and it is filled with an address bar and navigation buttons.

It's not a fully developed idea yet, so feedback is appreciated.