@ John
I REALLY wish there were more replies on the mailing lists like this
that actually gives proper reasons for why certain actions are taken.
Your posting actually alleviates many of my concerns with the LIM but
I am still concerned about the fiddliness of using vertical menus and
how easy it is to slip off the menus altogether but I'm not sure of a
fix to that other than being more careful.
Though when all is said and done I think I prefer to stick with the
global menu so I'm hoping any intruduction of LIM does not lead to
global menu being ripped out altogether?
On 14 March 2012 10:27, John Lea <john.lea@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:john.lea@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Hi All,
Thx for the feedback, but might it not be a bit premature to start
critiquing functionality before you have tried using it? I am
reasonably confident that nobody who has replied to this thread
has yet used LIM because a) not all the code for it has been
finished b) the first post makes a bunch on incorrect assumptions
about how LIM works, and none of the replies have pointed this
out! Anyhow, in the interests of not letting this get in the way
of a good discussion... ;-)
So here is a quick light hearted locally integrated menus Q&A to
hopefully clear up any misconceptions:
Q. What are locally integrated menus?
A. Menus within the context of each individual window.
Q. How are these menus displayed?
A. There are two options, either traditional menus at the top of
each window, or menus integrated into the window title bar.
Q. What do you mean by menus integrated into the window title bar?
A. Click on the Window Title in the window title bar and the root
level menu is revealed as a... menu!
Q. Some apps don't have menus. How do I know that when I click
the Window Title a menu will be revealed?
A. Apps that have menus will have a small, subtle icon to the
left of the window indicating that a menu is available. A similar
design pattern is already used in applications on other platforms.
Q. ahhh, fewwww, for a moment I thought I would have to click or
move my mouse over that itsy bitsy tini wini small icon every
time I needed to reveal a menu. I was already having nightmares
about it!
A. No need to worry, we wouldn't make you target such a small
area every time you needed a menu ;-)
Q. How about the idea of displaying the menu in the window title
bar horizontally?
A. This was our initial idea. However with this design you run
into a bunch problems with both dragging the window and with small
windows. We went through all the possibilities of how we could
solve these problems with things like having a reserved space on
the right hand side of the window title bar for dragging, etc...,
but this still impacted window management and was a very hackish,
dirty solution. And there was still the problem of small windows.
Q. I don't want to click to reveal menu! I have RSI, and every
click hurts so I try to keep clicks to a minimum.
A. Then used the 'traditional menu' option. You loose screen
real estate, and you have to look at menus all the time, but that
additional click is avoided.
Q. But why can't you just reveal the menu on mouseover? Surly
this is a better solution?
A. Again this was part of the initial idea, along with menus
integrated into the window title bar itself horizontally. However
this also affected window dragging, and we set ourselves a design
baseline of not regressing window drag behavior in any way. In
addition, the dev team pointed out that having menu reveal on
mouseover would not work well with X, would require changes to
IndicatorAppMenu, and would more than double the required
development time. So usability regressions for window dragging +
the thought of doubling the required development budget conspired
to kill this idea.
Q. Tell me more about how the menu is revealed, won't clicking on
the Window Title to reveal the menu also get in the way of
dragging windows?
A. The menu is only revealed on the *release* of a normal click.
A 'hold' won't display the menu when it is released, and large
pointer movement between the 'press' and 'release' of the click
will similarly stop the menu from being displayed. However small
amounts of mouse movement are tolerated, as there is almost always
a small amount of unintentional mouse movement, even in the low
millisecond time range between the 'press' and 'release' of the
click. The result of this behavior is that you can drag the
window by clicking on any point in the window title bar without
worrying about accidentally revealing the menu. However if you
want to reveal the menu all you have to do is click!
Q. Sounds great! When can I start using it?
A. Thanks for your enthusiasm, but there is still some way to go
before it is ready to use. The design is still under
consideration, and we haven't yet completed user testing which may
well drive further changes. Also while this is an important
feature, 12.04 is a LTS, and for a LTS the primary concern is
stability. This feature did not hit our quality standards by the
required deadline, and as much as I love this feature it is more
important that we don't do anything that might jeopardize making
12.04 a rock solid release.
Q. That's all well and good, but you haven't answered my question
about when I can start using it.
A. We are looking at options for bringing LIM into 12.04
post-release, but I can't promise anything yet, and it may well be
that LIM becomes a 12.10 feature.
I hope that answers some of your questions ;-) I look forward to
a more in-depth discussion and good constructive bug reports as
soon as this feature is ready and made available for testing.
thanks,
John
On 14/03/12 04:48, Omar B. wrote:
I have to agree that LIM is not the best solution and could have
some issues.
From all the feedback in bug 682788, was able to conclude that a
better solution would be something combined from these 2 urls:
http://musl1m.deviantart.com/art/Windicators-well-sort-of-203350326
https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/682788/comments/106
That would probably satisfy most users.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2012 00:30:10 +0000
From: shaneymail@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:shaneymail@xxxxxxxxx>
To: f_padia@xxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:f_padia@xxxxxxxxxxx>
CC: unity-design@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:unity-design@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Unity-design] (no subject)
I agree about LIM. I used a similar system on KDE
(oxygen-appmenu) and at first I liked it a lot but over time it
becomes a huge annoyance.
It feels inconvenient when you are just trying to get to a
particular menu item quickly (which is where the HUD could prove
invaluable) and it can be frustrating when you open a submenu and
the mouse goes slightly in the wrong place and in trying to
correct you end up losing the menu and have to start again.
As far as I'm concerned, LIM is NOT the way to go unless it is
optional and not default.
As far as your idea goes for integrating into the titlebar:
This is something I have also suggested in various places and
seems the perfect solution.
The menu is out of sight when not needed but just as easy to
access as traditional (boring) window menus.
The best bit is, it's consitent with the global menu so users who
choose to have the menu on the menubar or integrated into
individual windows would still be instantly familiar with the
behavior (windo title replaced by menu on mouse-over).
My only concern about your specific idea is the menu icon may be
too small a target for many users.
Discovery probably wouldn't be a problem since users would likely
mouse-over the menu icon just to see what it is but more
experienced users would want to move their mouse where the expect
the menu entry to be, not move to the menu icon then move across
to the menu entry.
I think for such an idea to fully work, one would need to be able
to place the mouse in any part of the title bar.
On 14 March 2012 00:11, Faheem Padia <f_padia@xxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:f_padia@xxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Sorry to re-post but I've been advised that emailing all
contacts the way I had first time wasn't the best way of
starting a discussion so this should correct that...
Hello to all,
I have just joined the list because I had a design idea for the
implementation of the locally integrated menus that are
supposed to be
introduced at some point. I originally put the idea on
brainstorm but it
was marked as 'not an idea' on the basis that unity design is
actively
discussed in other places. I guessed this was on such place
where my
idea might be more appropriately voiced but if I am wrong
please let me
know. Anyway on to the idea...
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.
I'm sure a number of ideas for this have been explored and I
apologise
if this particualr idea has also been discussed but it would be
interesting to hear other peoples opinions nonetheless.
Thanks
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