Re: Some hints for usability improvements

[Peter Bloomfield <peterbloomfield bellsouth net>]

On 02/14/2006 11:01:28 AM Tue, Cyrille Mars wrote:
> Hello everybody
>
>
> I'm using xpn as a news reader (http://xpn.altervista.org) and  
> one thing I really like is One-Key reading. By default it's set  
> to space. When you press space the message windows scrolls  
> down, at the end of the message if you press space again you go  
> to next unread message. I don't know if i'm clear as english is  
> not my native language but reading all new message with only  
> one key is realy nice and it would be great if balsa  
> implemented the same behavior.

You're very clear!  I believe one-key reading can be implemented.  
Balsa uses PageUp, PageDown, CursorUp, and CursorDown to scroll  
within a message, so a couple of different implementations are  
possible:
- continue to use just those keys, but interpret an attempt to  
scroll down below the end of a message as a request to chain to  
the next unread message;
- add space-bar as an addition to PageDown for scrolling, and  
chain to the next unread message only if the space-bar is used to  
try to scroll below the end of the current message.

The first is simplest, but a user might be surprised by jumping  
to a new message just because of hitting PageDown too many times.

Opinions?

Peter

BTW: Imho, any implementation should be intuitive enough not to  
need a new user-pref!