Re: User interface suggestions

["Blad, John Erling" <john erling blad aftenposten no>]

>This is a bit like the MacOS "Recent Applications" menu I think,
>except at a finer level.

Duno.. Speedbar was partly from Windoze.. ;)

>1 give a menu a "default item", that the user can set, and arrange that
>  (e.g.) a quick mouse press or a double click does the default action
>  instead of showing the menu.  There are some awkwardnesses with this:
>  one implementation used a different mouse button to do the default action,
>  and previewed its name so you could drag off to cancel.

Played with togglebuttons (Motif) but didn't get what I wanted.

>2 allow people to rearrange menu items by dragging (as per the Start menu
>  in Win98).

We had one constraint that was hard to get around, configurability *and*
other users on the same box with the same setup. They should be able to
still run the app when an other user had configured the thing.

>3 a floating "ferquent menus" pallette - drag menu items or toolbar icons
>  into it from any application, and if necessary the application is started
>  when you press the button.

Yeah, I belive this is the "right" way to do it. But then the menus in the
application don't get any simpler.

The floating (speed-) menu should be common for many apps..

>A per-application frequently/recently used menu item gadget (remembered
>across sessions) might be very interesting.

Like the menubar on a Mac?
There is at least four different "windows" or "docking areas" you could
create: Menubar, toolbar, main window(s) and dialog areas. You map applets
or something similar as you rise the different main windows.

>A "floating pallette" (3) would be more useful if you could drag a piece
>of text from a text entry, label, window title or wherever and drop it
>onto te "File Open" icon in a toolbar, or onto an "Open" entry in a menu.

Could be.. This creates new problems because drag & drop is invisible actions
and not all actions in a speed menu will have those behaviour. You could "cut"
by dragging text onto the icon and likewise paste by dragging from the "paste"
icon, but how do you visualise to the user what's going on? That is, how does
something move from the cut-icon to the paste-icon? It is a lot of such
weird things that emerge from drag & drop.

>Right now, gtk isn't really high level enough for that sort of behaviour
>to work well, I think.  You want a concept of a "command request object"
>such as (open-file "filename" "name of requesting task"), or maybe
>something like the CDE ToolTalk protocol going on.

It is easy to implement inside an application. A common floating speedbar
is difficult but not that difficult.

>Lee

John