[Sugar-devel] two kinds of delay (was: RFC: Kill the delayed menus for good)

[Albert Cahalan]

Michael Stone writes:

> Good suggestion for discoverability, inadequate suggestion for
> fast access to the actually rather important information hidden
> on the secondary palettes (e.g. disk space availability, battery
> status, etc.)

That trumps all.

There are two kinds of delay. Type 1 is stuff like drop-down menus
that remain even if the mouse briefly goes out of bounds. This kind
of delay normally doesn't waste a nanosecond of the user's time.
Type 2 is stuff like start-up animations, sliding menus, and these
delayed menus. Type 2 is in the critical path of user interaction.
It's normally a source of frustration, permanently preventing users
from becoming efficient.

Type 2 delays are almost never acceptable. The only case I can think
of is when something is about to cause a sudden screen change that
may be disorienting to the user. In that case, a very fast transition
effect (perhaps 0.1 second) can help the user follow what is happening.
I doubt the XO-1 hardware is capable of providing this; certainly the
current software situation is far too slow to even attempt it.

Since the delayed menus are a type 2 delay with no excuse, they really
need to go. Right now, users are forced to be essentially incompetent.
You'll never navigate quickly in sugar no matter how proficient you are.