Re: User interface suggestions

["Blad, John Erling" <john erling blad aftenposten no>]

> Well, that's perhaps a rather simplistic view...

I know.. ;) It is more to the menubar/toolbar/keyboard shortcut discussion
than what I wrote!

An idea I played with some time ago, what if you do something like a Mac
with the menubar on top of the desktop. In addition you make a left bar
(or right bar) with icons as a toolbar. With more space you can do more
fancy things. (You get more space because you don't waste space in individual
windows.) In the application windows you add a left pane with a drag handle.
When you drag this open you get a tree-like view of all actions. From this
tree you can drag actions into the (left) toolbar or into the (desktop)
menubar. You should not only be able to drag individual actions but subtrees.
One branch could be named "File" (supprise!), others "Edit" and "View".

An application would initially look pretty much like today but if the
user needs to do something fifferent and/or often, like switching language
in Outlook (..) he/she could drag the "Language"-branch into the menu bar.

There are a lot of missing bit's and pieces here.. Like if you drag something
into the menubar but want to get rid of some items. An other extremly nice
feature from OpenLook is left-clicks on the menubar as an accelerator. I have
no obvious way to incorporate this as a user configurable item.

John

-----Opprinnelig melding-----
Fra: Calum Benson [mailto:calum benson ireland sun com]
Sendt: 13. november 2000 15:47
Til: gnome-gui-list gnome org
Emne: Re: User interface suggestions


"Blad, John Erling" wrote:

> The thing is, the menu bar is something you use when you can't find the
> action (or whatever) anywhere else.

Well, that's perhaps a rather simplistic view... people do sometimes use
menu items even if the command has a toolbar button or a keyboard
shortcut.  I know I certainly do!  I don't think there's any one reason
why this is; the main ones for me are (a) using a command so
infrequently that it's not worth learning its toolbar icon/keyboard
shortcut, and (b) inconsistency between the shortcuts/icons for the same
command in different apps-- e.g. "deslect all" has a different shortcut
in at least three different paint apps that I use, so I just use the
menu instead to be sure.

Objectively, menus quite ofen turn out to be quicker to use than
keyboard shortcuts anyway, even though subjectively, keyboard die-hards
*think* they're doing the tasks quicker.  People who've cottoned on to
this are more likely to use menus as a first resort rather than a last
one, too.

Incidentally, if you're interested, Bruce Tognazzini has a few articles
about the mouse v. keyboard debate (and why the mouse usually wins) at:

http://www.asktog.com/readerMail/1999-12ReaderMail.html
http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html
http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi22KeyboardVMouse2.html
http://www.asktog.com/SunWorldColumns/S02KeyboardVMouse3.html

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems

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