[Sugar-devel] [Design] Resume/New pie menu menu mockup

[Gary Martin]

Hi Mathieu,

On 10 Jul 2010, at 18:52, Mathieu Bridon <bochecha at fedoraproject.org> wrote:

> Hi Gary,
> 
> On 07/10/2010 07:15 PM, Gary C Martin wrote:
>> Here's a mockup for Walter's previous pie menu suggestion (starting a new thread as Sascha though the last one was getting too long). Pie menus have some nice UI properties, but can also be difficult to get working right for all cases (I've tried not to cheat in the mockup). I'd consider this a more touch friendly layout than current palettes/hover-menus (something the fullscreen dialogue approach was also trying to take into account). The inner two choices appear instantly on click. The outer segments appear on delay hover, with a 90% alpha to help keep the user in context (though given our ongoing lack of compositing, solid fill might have to do). Rolling over a segment lights up its fill, the whole of each segment needs to accept hits.
> 
> That looks pretty nice, but something instantly comes to mind: when this pie menu is open, what if I realize I clicked on the wrong activity, and the one I wanted is now *under* the pie menu? Do I have to click outside so that the menu disappears, then I can finally open the pie menu for the activity I was interested in?

The pie could be dismissed on rollout and/or clicking outside (clicking event outside would be solution for touch devices).

> How about something like this:
> 
>                o     x
>             o     o /
>            o       o - x
>             o     o \
>                o     x
> 
> (yes, this is a poor ascii-art for the Sugar activity launcher :)

:)

> The circle of « o »'s represents the activities in the launcher, and when the rightmost one is clicked/hovered/..., then the recent items (the ones you have put in a pie chart, here represented by the « x »'s) appear in a semi-pie-menu (its orientation depending on where the corresponding activity is located on the circle). This way, the menu remains out of the way of launching another activity as an afterthought.
> 
> This could also help the « I had this document that I want to open again but I don't remember the pretty picture I have to click to open it » situation (although I'm not sure it is a common one, and the journal would help anyway).
> 
> What do you think?

Yes, it's another possible option, assuming we always and only have a circle fav view layout. I'm trying to imagine what happens as you add more and more fav activities (as kids do), would the resume 'slices' shrink along with the main activity icon in the ring (as if you zoomed further and further back from the whole UI as the ring grows)?

Actually this whole pie concept is starting to feel like a conversation Michael Stone started with me off list a year ago :)

--Gary 

> -- 
> Mathieu
> 
> 
> PS: Sorry if this had already been suggested and dismissed, I haven't really been following this mailing-list recently.
>