[Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Instant palette popdown - a usability improvement

[Walter Bender]

On Sat, May 28, 2016 at 9:22 AM, Tony Anderson <tony_anderson at usa.net>
wrote:

> Hi Walter,
>
> I am not sure why the right-click should not open a palette whose function
> is comparable to the context-menus in other systems. I don't know how a
> right click is used as an accelerator.
>

It is accelerating what hover does.


>
> The issue is that a right-click can open a palette which stays open until
> there is another click or the user clicks in the palette. This is much
> better than our current disappearing menus (if you move the cursor so as to
> leave the boundary of the icon and its palette for a microsecond, it
> disappears and you have to start over. This also means hover can be used
> for tooltips - a single piece of information (the name of the activity, for
> example.
>

We have more info the longer you hover. We could perhaps delay the
disappearance or expand the hit area to address your concern.

>
> I think Sam's concerns about the home view arises from its being used to
> resume activities which is redundant to the use of the Journal view for
> that purpose.
> Originally in Sugar, a click on the icon launched an activity (as it does
> now in the List View. A click on an icon in the Journal view resumed the
> activity. This
> was a very simple and understandable interface. In most cases users did
> not have to see or understand a palette menu.
>
>
We went through this many times. The current behavior reflects the need to
address among other things, journal spam. In my computing life, 90+% of the
time I am continuing existing work rather than starting something new. And
we have a keyboard shortcut for the latter behavior. We did discuss having
some activities be able to override the default behavior. Which would you
suggest?


> Actually this style probably promotes discoverability. When a user clicks
> on an icon in the Home View and an arbitrary activity instance is launched,
> the
> user does not have a predicable starting point. This is particularly
> difficult in situations where an XO is shared among multiple users since
> Sugar has no
> way to know who was the last to launch an activity.
>

We need to address the multiple user issue separately. Each user should
have their own history.

>
>
> Tony
>
>
>
>
> On 05/28/2016 02:29 PM, Walter Bender wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sat, May 28, 2016 at 8:18 AM, Sam Parkinson <sam.parkinson3 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Tony,
>>
>> On Thu, May 26, 2016 at 8:58 PM, Tony Anderson < <tony_anderson at usa.net>
>> tony_anderson at usa.net> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Sam
>>
>> I like the Google apps button on the Google main page and the menu button
>> at the far right of the Firefox toolbar. They show as a popup and have
>> plenty of screen space for icons and larger font sizes. This could
>> support a design in which a left-click always causes an action and a
>> right-click is required
>> to open up the 'palette' This is done well on the standard toolbar.
>>
>> On the Home View, for instance. I would prefer that left-clicking on the
>> icon launches the activity (new start). The tooltip shows the name of the
>> activity (and nothing else). A right-click can open a list of instances
>> available to be resumed. Using the Google or Firefox style, the list of
>> instances can look exactly like the corresponding entry in the Journal.
>>
>>
>> I think that if we make palettes right click only, we loose an
>> important discoverability aspect.  Do you find the hover-to-open helpful or
>> harmful to discoverability in your experience?
>>
>
> +1. I implore you not to make any aspect of the interface depend upon
> right click. It should always be an accelerator, but nothing more.
>
>>
>> I also think that the homeview palettes are a special case.  We aren't
>> going to be able to add more items or elaberation to the running activity
>> palettes, or the buddy palettes.  If we wanted to make the journal more
>> intergrated with the homeview, couldn't we just replace the homeview with
>> an enhanced journal?  (Did we discuss this on list? [1])
>>
>
> I think a lot could be done in that space. Love to see some concrete
> proposals.
>
>>
>> I find the idea of a larger font size interesting.  Is the current
>> palette font size too small?  It is also important to remember that any
>> font size increase makes the distance you need to move the mouse bigger,
>> which could be a negative.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Sam
>>
>> [1]  https://www.sam.today/blog/sugar-nohomeview-design.html
>>
>>
>>
>> Tony
>>
>> On 05/26/2016 12:44 PM, <sam at sam.today>sam at sam.today wrote:
>>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> A while ago, I dropped a mention on the list to how many users found the
>> palette system confusing, at least in my usability testing experiment.
>>
>> I recently wrote this up, with a more detailed rational;
>> https://www.sam.today/blog/sugar-with-instant-palettes/
>>
>> I invite you to comment on this.  This could be an interesting change for
>> sugar (0.)110.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Sam
>>
>>
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>>
>
>
> --
> Walter Bender
> Sugar Labs
> http://www.sugarlabs.org
>
>
>
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-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org
<http://www.sugarlabs.org>
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