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Message #08713
Re: (no subject) LIM (locally integrated menus)
Thank you John for providing that very useful Q&A. There were a few
things that I didnt know and yes you're right I havent used LIM yet. I
was basing my initial idea on what I had read about it, which I supposed
was a bit premature.
The particular point I was not aware of was
that clicking anywhere on the window title brought up the menu. I had
thought that only clicking on the little menu icon would bring up the
menu, which was why I was a little confused when someone commented about
it being difficult to hover over a small area to reveal the menu.
Anyway
it seems that implementing my original idea would not be easy. In which
case might I make a final suggestion and that is to have a 'toggle
menu' button in the title bar. Clicking on it would toggle the
horizontal menu in title bar on/off. This would be aimed at more
experienced users who make more use of the menu than new users who might
not access it very much (and might actually prefer the HUD). Toggling
on the menu would obiviously then interfere with the window controls but
toggling them off would then give the title bar back for this purpose. I
think this might be a convenient trade-off for users who use the menu
bar a lot. This actually comes from another criticism I have read about
the vertical menu and that is that once clicked a user has to navigate
to the desired menu entry whereas with the permanently displayed menu
the user can go directly to the desired entry.
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2012 10:27:57 +0000
From: john.lea@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: unity-design@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [Unity-design] (no subject) LIM (locally integrated menus)
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
To: f_padia@xxxxxxxxxxx
CC: 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>
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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John Lea | Ubuntu Desktop User Experience Lead
Canonical www.canonical.com | Ubuntu www.ubuntu.com
27th Floor, 21-24 Millbank Tower, London, SW1P 4QP
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