unity-design team mailing list archive

[Mark Shuttleworth <mark@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 09/11/10 20:39, Jeremy Nickurak wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 13:31, Mark Shuttleworth <mark@xxxxxxxxxx
> <mailto:mark@xxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>
>     On 09/11/10 20:07, Jeremy Nickurak wrote:
>>     On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 12:21, Mark Shuttleworth <mark@xxxxxxxxxx
>>     <mailto:mark@xxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>>
>>         I don't think we have a comprehensive horizontal-nav
>>         guideline, yet. I do think we have a policy that cases where
>>         horizontal behaviour is introduced need to be carefully
>>         thought through and documented - I thought for example that
>>         the Sound Menu specified the following behaviour for the
>>         playback controls: moving down or up to the playback controls
>>         should place the visible focus on the play button, where
>>         space would pause/play, and left/right would trigger
>>         previous/next returning the focus immediately to the play button.
>>
>>
>>     Really? Keyboard controls on hovering on a menu item would seem
>>     to have really really low discoverability. I never would have
>>     imagined to try such a thing.
>     No, this is keyboard navigation, nothing to do with mouse hover.
>
>
> Aren't right/left supposed to switch between menus?
>

Yes, they are, and hence the need to think this through carefully. The
calculus was that the normal user flipping between menus is running
along the "top" item in the menu. If they've come all the way down to
the playback controls, left and right can reasonably be interpreted as
"next/previous track" rather than "go to the menu left or right of the
sound menu". That's a tradeoff, but it's a calculated one rather than an
accident. The movement in the focus (briefly to the next/previous
button, then back to the play/pause button) should make this explicit.

We faced a similar, harder, problem with the Me Menu. The top entry
there is a broadcast textbox. That used to trap focus, meaning that left
and right were interrupted. We said left/right there should jump to the
next menu if the textbox was empty, to resolve that issue.

I'm saying: we don't have a full, complete, definitive guideline, only a
guideline to think through this and try to balance common patterns and
behaviours, backed by user testing.

Mark

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