Re: User interface suggestions

["Michael T. Babcock" <mbabcock fibrespeed net>]

Pasi Parnanen wrote:

> To me it's like having a hole open up to a "desktop" with only application icons on it. Not just a (horisontal or vertical) line of icons but a pad where i can place the icons in two dimensions. Please don't think "taskbar" but rather "pop-up scrollable chessboard".
>
> If i had this "board" or "palette" today i would put one column of visual apps like gimp and blender, another one for audio apps like xmms and gtcd and more colums for each category that i wanted. Using it would be faster than the multiple drawer setup i have now, because i wouldn't hit the wrong drawer button, and i could go from A to B diagonally if that was the shortest way. I can't do that now.

This is exactly the way the Apple Newton handheld handles application icons.  I always found it very useful on a handheld device ...

... each "Drawer" pops up to a necessary height to show all the icons stored in it, but is the full width of the screen, instead of just one row/column of icons.  This could be configured, I suppose, but works much better than a 'start menu' concept and doesn't require any interesting hysterisis (sp?) calculations to make sure the right section opens for the user.

/----------- (v) Audio ---------------\
|  ICON   ICON   ICON   ICON   ICON   |
| (label)(label)(label)(label)(label) |
|                                     |
|  ICON   ICON   ICON   ICON   ICON   |
| (label)(label)(label)(label)(label) |
|                                     |
|=====================================|

The (v) is a drop down menu to select the folder you want ...
--
Michael T. Babcock, C.T.O. FibreSpeed
http://www.fibrespeed.net/~mbabcock