unity-design team mailing list archive

[Alex Lourie <djay.il@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 8:39 PM, Frederik Nnaji <frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:

> Hello SABDFL ;)
>
> On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 12:28, Mark Shuttleworth <mark@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > We already have mechanisms for multiple selection, with dragging to
> > lasso a set of icons, ctrl-click to select an arbitrary set, and
> > shift-click to continue a selection along a list.
>
> Of course we have keyboard shortcuts for all sorts of operations, but
> can we also pull off  these operations when we're in a tablet or
> touchpad mode?
>
>
Maybe think of another metaphor? I don't believe that tablet usability
issues should dictate
what happens on the desktop where we do have a keyboard and a mouse. If you
all you want is
recreate a desktop on the tablet device, look what happened to all
Windows-based devices. That's why
today's tablets are not copying desktop per se, they use different use
model.

That said, I'd like to have another reasons for doing this, as the "hard to
do on a tablet" doesn't quite convinces me.


> > I don't see a need for the checkboxes at all.
>
> This i can understand, since checkboxes are tiny and perhaps easy to
> miss, using a touchpad.. I'd suggest make their <area> a reasonably
> fault tolerant.
>

And once again, you argue with the tablet. Let's step a bit back to the
desktop for a moment. Do you sincerely believe
that checkboxes are more convenient and easy than the "double-click"
paradigm? I suspect that hitting the checkbox would
be no easier than double-click to open.

In fact, I believe that most of the new age tablets in existence today don't
have a file/file manager metaphor at all (and some do only as the
*additional* application).

-- 
Alex Lourie