[Sugar-devel] RFC: Kill the delayed menus for good

[Michael Stone]

A word of initial warning: please turn on your sense of the absurd
before reading. This response is written with a deep sense of amusement,
rather than angst.

Tomeu wrote:

> I'm more concerned about developers proposing big user experience
> changes because they feel it's better. 

Yay, more roadblocks and stereotyping! :)

Are you actually saying that you'd prefer either

   a) no patches or,
   b) patches that I think make the system worse?

> Before I look at the patch I would like to know if there's agreement
> from people close to our users that this behavior change is desired.
> How can we get that?

Well, trying it might be one good way to start. :)

After that, shipping it in an explicit beta is another more heavyweight
but nevertheless time-tested approach.

Failing that option, you likely need to find some product specialists.

...

For what it's worth, I do view this patch as a UI bandaid to the
underlying problem that hover-to-click-somewhere-else is the wrong UI
affordance for the home screen to use in supporting discovery of and
access to variant or associated behaviors. The patch is, however, still
a big improvement that is available today.

Now, as for what "better" look like: treat each view has having a
primary layout algorithm for Sugar-level UI actions. This algorithm
should effectively arrange logically related groups of capabilities as
determined by metadata attached to the capabilities and as determined by
the current filtering criteria for the view.

In actual activities, this layout algorithm is the "new toolbar
approach". The filtering criteria are "hover-or-click on an expandable
toolbar item."

In the circle view, I'd like to see the layout algorithm expanded to lay
out arcs of smaller option icons each with the same prelighting and
saturation behavior as partial halos around the exterior perimeter of
the activity icons. Naturally, there are some obvious interesting
extensions involving zoom effects and more subtle saturation behaviors.

Lastly, it seems to me that a similar approach might also be effective
in the mesh view and around the central XO-figure.

Kind regards,

Michael