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

[Michael Stone]

> Daniel wrote:
> 2009/10/13 Bernie Innocenti <bernie at codewiz.org>:
> > Hello,
> >
> > Michael just passed by the Acetarium and, since the dinner was late,
> > we found the time to test and review his latest prototype^W patch.
> >
> > I'm loving how the menus suddenly are now snappy and responsive.
> 
> I haven't tried it, and your mail also lacks an explicit explanation
> of what your patch actually does, but based on the hints you have
> provided, :
> 
> It makes all menus that currently have a delay appear instantly?

It makes the menus appear and disappear much more quickly by setting the
length of their animations to be "0.0 seconds", thereby simulating
"snappy and responsive". Whether or not their appearance and
disappearance is "instantaneous" depends on your processor; Python and
GTK are still surprisingly slow.

> I don't like the idea, as I think that the delay has influenced
> Sugar's UI design quite heavily.

You're obviously entitled to your opinion. I'd still appreciate it if
you tried out the patch.

> For example, a user is on the home screen with ring view enabled, and
> the mouse cursor is on the left side of the screen. The user wants to
> shut down the XO. He moves the cursor towards the XO figure in the
> middle of the screen, but while doing so passes over an activity icon
> in the ring. The menu immediately appears, completely obscuring the XO
> figure that he was going to click on.

I have actually tried to produce this behavior. In practice, I can't
find anyway to make it frustrating because the menus also *disappear*
quickly when the cursor leaves their boundary.

(I would nevertheless be interested in hearing about actual experience
reports from frustrated users.)

Regards,

Michael