unity-design team mailing list archive

[Dylan McCall <dylanmccall@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 5:11 PM, Faheem Padia <f_padia@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> […]
> Basically from the opinions of other Ubuntu users I have read (mostly on
> OMGUbuntu) I understand that LIM is not particularly popular in its
> current form. The 2 main criticisms I have come across commonly are that
> 1. having a vertical menu is not convenient and requires re-learning the
> arrangement of menu items unnecessarily and
> 2. implementing LIM would mean an additional click is required to
> actually see the menu which is counter-productive
>
> so my idea so solve both of these would be to have an animated reveal of
> the menu horizontally in the window title bar when the mouse hovers over
> the menu icon. This would keep the menu as close to how it is currently
> but also introduce the LIM concept of having the menu attached to the
> title bar of an application. This solution also doesnt introduce any new
> problems of dragging windows (that I have come across from other ideas)
> since the menu only reveals when the mouse passes over the menu icon and
> not over the title bar in general.
> […]

Okay, just to be sure, you're suggesting the operation should be to
hover over some target in the corner, to expose the menu bar inside
the title bar, then move the pointer horizontally to the intended menu.
Is that correct?

I don't think this would be ergonomical. It sounds like your reason is
to reduce the number of clicks to get to a menu, but the menu already
involves clicking; it isn't like you go into using the menu and expect
to not click anything. Here, we'd be trading a click for a
significant, difficult mouse movement (200+ pixels horizontally
without moving outside ~30 pixels vertically, after hovering over a
smallish target at a very specific place on the screen). That sounds
frustrating.

A solution to that may be to hold the menu open if the user clicks on
the menu button, but I still wonder about the amount of horizontal
mouse movement involved. It's much easier to mouse over labels
vertically than horizontally. Each label has the same height (instead
of varying widths), and it's a small number like 20 pixels. Also, I
think it's just plain easier to move a mouse vertically without
inducing extra movement, so it's easier to land on a target. That
could just be me.

Yes, menu bars are horizontal, but you don't need to guide the mouse
along a track. I don't have real data handy, but I would bet (*looks
for stuff I have extra of*) a free copy of Portal that people
predominantly move their pointers _diagonally_ to reach menus and
other controls. No right angles anywhere.

I'm not sure about the "least number of clicks" rationale as a driving
force for any design, because I think it tends to be treating the
symptom rather than the disease. If people are commenting on the
number of clicks involved, perhaps those clicks are just terribly
unsatisfying? For example, a configuration dialog where you have to
click Apply and then Close. I think _that_ would be a serious too many
clicks problem. There's perhaps a case that clicking to see what's
available is a little troublesome, but that's already a problem if you're
looking for something more specific than File, View or Help.

What I definitely like here is this would be more discoverable than
clicking to open a menu, and as we get more and more menu buttons
inside applications (eg: the new Disks tool in Gnome 3.4) it would be
nice to imagine different ways to hint at menus (or buttons, or other
things) _before_ they are opened, because there are likely some good
reasons for doing that.
Your idea might have some good stuff along those lines :)

Dylan