[Sugar-devel] ribbon, right-click, button bars (was: RFC: Kill the delayed menus for good)

[Albert Cahalan]

On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 4:19 PM, Eben Eliason <eben at laptop.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 4:08 PM, Albert Cahalan <acahalan at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Eben Eliason writes:

>>> Another possibility would be to educate children about right click
>>> somehow.
>>
>> On the one hand, I think it's really important to do this. Besides
>> the human-compatibility issue and the extra expressive power, I think
>> using a second button will help to develop the mind a bit. (you're not
>> just grabbing or poking when you click; you're performing an action
>> that could be determined by which button you click)
>>
>> On the other hand, I think both buttons should be the left button
>> by default. Kids have trouble hitting the correct button. Button
>> mistakes should not be something kids face from the moment go.
>
> Yup. The hardware design was done before a UI team was organized at
> OLPC. One of the first suggestions, though it was already too late,
> was to limit the hardware to one button.

The hardware needs two buttons so that it can support
the kid as he grows older. The only button issue I can
see is that there is no space between the buttons; there
should be a gap or the buttons should be on opposite
sides of the track pad. (not that a track pad is OK with
filthy kid fingers)

The software should map the buttons together by default.

Here's a config proposal:

By default, the buttons are mapped together and there
are hover menus. There is a config switch that enables
distinct buttons and changes hover menus to right-click
menus.

Here is an alternate default:

The right button shows an animation of clicking on the
left button or similar, correcting the user. (this is currently
the default for Tux Paint; an adult is expected to change
to both-are-left for 2-year-old kids)

> provide a more traditional right-click functionality both because it
> did provide a way to offer more contextual actions in a manner
> consistent with other interfaces that already exist, and because we
> thought it could actually be perplexing to have two buttons that
> always appeared to do the same thing. If that's proving problematic
> for children in practice, we could make a change there. I hadn't heard
> much on that particular issue, so I don't know how common (or
> persistent) it is.

It's not that they don't understand. Their fingers land in the wrong spot.
They may click right in the middle, hitting both buttons at once.