Re: Something about the menus in the Panel...

[Adam Chodorowski <archmage earthdome com>]

> >An alternative way of implementing the same feature would be to let the
> >user right-click on the menu-entry instead. That way it wouln't be
> >necessary for the extra entry in the submenus, and it would look nicer
> >(no button :)). However, that wouldn't be really intuitive either.
> 
> I think this is a reasonable binding. In general, I think Win95's
> button semantics are quite good. "Left click to use something in the
> default way, right click to do something more complicated with it".
> I didn't see anything about mouse button bindings in the style guide at
>   http://www.gnome.org/devel/sg/
> is there a convention? If not, may I suggest this one?

No! That is NOT a good convention. Why, you ask? 
Well, because it defines to little. What it really says, is that the 
program do anything it wants if the user right-clicks on an object. 
And that is Not a Good Thing (tm).  It can become really frustrating 
to the  user, because he/she can never be shure what the program will
do.

What you ought to do instead, is to define what is supposed to happen
for each type of widget. You could write something like this...

Type of widget	| What to do if there is a right-click on it.
----------------+--------------------------------------------------------
Text-entry	| Pop up a menu with editing-commands (ie. 'copy', 
		| 'paste', 'cut', etc.
Imagebutton	| If there is a alternative action for the button, change 
(in a toolbox)	| the image in the button to an alternative one,
		| indicating that the alternative function is selected.
		
...you get the idea. This way, the user will always know what to expect 
from a program when right-clicking on an object. And that is a Good
Thing.:)  


Anyway, back to the menus of the panel. I've thought about some more,
and 
the suggestions I made earlier aren't optimal either, really. 
For the user, it isn't instantly apparent that it is possible to 
right-click on or drag a menu-entry, since that isn't the way normal
menus work. And there isn't any graphical indication that it can be
done.

Instead, you could give all menu-entries sub-menus, where the different 
options where listed. Something like the ugly ASCII drawing here below:


.------------------.
| Administration > |
| Graphics	 > |
| Games		 .------------------------.
| Utilities	 | Add to panel as menu	  |
| ...		 | Add to panel as drawer |
| 		 | Properties		  |
| 		 | ---------------------- |
| 		 | Gnobots		> |
|		 | Gnome-Mines		> |
|		 | Gnothello		.--------------.
|		 | Unreal		| Add to panel |
|		 | Civilization 2	| Properties   |
|		 | ...			`--------------´
:		 :			  :
.		 .			  .


Something lika that anyway. :) The user could click directly at the 
menu-entry, or select the options from the sub-menu. This would be
quite intuitive, and imidiatly apparent to the new user. 
The menus in the BeOS work in a similar way (ie. you can select
an menu-entry even if it has submenus) and works remarkably well.

Another possible way of action would be to open the properties-dialog
if the user shift/ctrl/alt-clicks on a menu-entry. And then in this
dialog have options to "add to panel" and so on. 

Actually, I think the sub-menu-thingy would be best.

Any thoughts? Does anyone from the gui-list read this? :)  

-- 
Adam Chodorowski (archmage@earthdome.com)