Re: New magnifier UI: Input requested

[Juanjo Marín <juanjomarin96 yahoo es>]

El Viernes 14 de febrero de 2014 17:25, Joseph Scheuhammer <clown alum mit edu> escribió:

Improvements to the magnifier preferences dialog have been suggested.  
> A  mockup, courtesy of Allan Day, can be found at the following URL:
> https://raw.github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/master/system-settings/universal-access/zoom-and-filters.png
>
> One of the additions is a check box labelled "Keep keyboard focus in  
> view" that is on the left hand "Zoom" panel.  This is for toggling the 
> activation of focus/caret tracking.
>
> The gnome-shell magnifier supports tracking modes for widget focus,  
> caret focus, and mouse pointer movement.  Furthermore, these are 
> independent of each other.  However, the proposed dialog combines 
> them.   The radio buttons above the check box list different mouse 
> tracking  modes, i.e. "Push with pointer", "Follow pointer", and "Keep 
> pointer  centered".  Whatever mode is set for the mouse will be used for 
> both  focus and caret tracking.
>
> The question is what do magnifier users want or need regarding tracking 
> types?  Are there use cases for having the types of tracking independent 
> of each other?  Or, if the user chooses "centered" for one,  that 
> applies to all? We would really like user input.
>
> To give a better idea of what this is about, I'll be the use case, 
> since  I use a magnifier on occasion, and at a low magnification factor 
> (1.75x).  My preference is "push" for mouse and caret tracking, but  
> "centered" for focus tracking.
>
> With respect to the mouse, I prefer it behave as close as possible to  
> the non-magnifier experience.  On a standard desktop, the mouse moves,  
> not the contents.  The mouse tracking mode that comes the closest to  
> that experience is "push", where the contents do not move in the  
> magnified view until the mouse abuts up against an edge. When it does,  
> the contents do move, but only enough to bring them into view.
>
> For myself, the text caret works in a similar way.  When using a word  
> processor, the caret generally moves in small increments -- left, 
> right,  up, and down --  and I prefer that the contents not move until 
> they need to.
>
> However, when using the keyboard to tab-navigate around the UI, widget 
> focus frequently jumps over large distances.  For example, I may be 
> near  the bottom of the screen editing a text document when I use 
> alt+tab to  use the task switcher.  Focus moves (warps) to the centre of 
> the screen,  far from where I was typing.  I need to reorientto the new 
> screen contents (my point of regard, so to speak),  and, in my case, 
> that is helped by centering the widget that just  acquired focus -- I 
> prefer "centered" tracking for changes in widget  focus.  Trying to 
> preserve little or no movement in the contents is  pointless here since 
> focus is likely to move large distances.
>
> Now, that's just me, and I stress that I am **not**putting my 
> preferences  forward as any kind of standard.  In fact, quite the 
> opposite.  Those  are my user preferences.  I fully expect other 
> magnifier users to have different ones, and we would like to know yours 
> so that we fully understand the needs and can incorporate them into the 
> UI being designed: Do you use the same tracking mode for focus, caret, 
> and mouse or different modes for each? And if you use different modes, why?



Hi Joseph !

I don't think you are the only one who prefers different tracking options. The only case I know uses push for 
the mount pointer and center/smart for the text caret and menu options. 


I think we need more flexibility options in this feature because it can be used for a wide range of people: 
cognitive problem like cerebral palsy that make difficult to focus, different grades of low vision, people 
who can't use the mouse or the keyboard as usual, etc.

Cheers,

   -- Juanjo Marin