Re: Heads Up Display

[Alan Lawrence <acl cantab net>]

One point I might add, is that frequently the best design for an
accessible user interface, is one that's more usable by anyone and
everyone, regardless of usability. However, I can see there are issues
of workload and responsibility here such that Bhaavan's interesting
suggestions could well be better pursued with another team.

Cheers, Alan

On 14 March 2012 15:50, Piñeiro <apinheiro igalia com> wrote:
> On 03/09/2012 01:40 PM, Bhaavan Merchant wrote:
>> Hello,
>
> Hi, sorry for the delay in the answer.
>
>> I am Bhaavan Merchant, and I have just joined this group. I have
>> really liked the Gnome Shell UI and how gnome has become much more
>> user friendly from Gnome3. Also, I have tried other environments like
>> KDE and Unity but did not find them as convenient as Gnome.
>>
>> However, one feature in Unity 5.4 has impressed me. The HUD (Heads Up
>> Display) ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_WW-DHqR3c ) which they
>> have implemented, provides an easy accessible way to navigate through
>> the menu system. The menu system, has been around since beginning of
>> GUIs and hasnt really changed with times. IMO, it is archaic and also
>> not consistent across different programs. IMO, HUD provides a good
>> work around for this making menus usable again especially for programs
>> like the Gimp, Inkscape, Blender etc. which have multi-level menu system.
>
> There is something that I don't understand. Why do you think that HUD is
> a accessibility improvement? In general GTK applications menu are right
> now accessible. If you say that because you feel that with this
> improvement Menus are more usable, IMHO, this is not an accessibility
> improvement, but an usability improvement.
>
>
>> Ofcourse we cannot remove the traditional menu system, since it is
>> more or less a necessity in most applications. However, we could have
>> HUD launch (perhaps on Alt keypress trigger), and make searching
>> through menus an easier task.
>
> This comments seems to justify my previous questions.
>
>>
>> I have prepared a mockup for this ( http://i.imgur.com/3rZm8.png ),
>> and would really love to hear your feedback and suggestions on this.
>> If the response is positive, I would love to work on this project, and
>> begin implementing this on gnome perhaps by gnome 3.6. Excuse my gimp
>> skills, because they are elementary.
>
> Idem.
>
>>
>> Flow:
>> 1) Normal Application is launched, and clicking its name on the top
>> bar launches a traditional menu.
>> 2) However when Alt is pressed, the traditional menu is replaced with
>> an HUD menu instance, and the keyboard focus changes to the textbox in
>> the HUD menu.
>> 3) As one types, a fuzzy logic comparison is applied to match to the
>> nearest available menu options and the result is populated in the menu.
>>
>> Thank you,
>
> The main focus of the work that we are doing to improve GNOME Shell
> accessibility is making the widgets,menus etc on GNOME Shell accessible,
> so for example, an Orca user could use GNOME Shell as any other user.
> But as I said, I feel that what you are proposing is about changing the
> usability of GNOME Shell. In that case you should contact GNOME Shell
> developers, or perhaps GNOME designers, as they are the ones that
> decides usability issues there.
>
> Thanks for your ideas and comments,
>
> BR
>
> --
> Alejandro Piñeiro Iglesias
>
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