Re: User interface suggestions

[thristian atdot org]

On Mon, Nov 13, 2000 at 03:24:15PM -0500, Liam Quin wrote:
> 2 allow people to rearrange menu items by dragging (as per the Start menu
>   in Win98).

Please, please, not without a modifier! On every menu byt the Start
menu, you can let go the button on a submenu (like "Accessories"),
look around, then mouse-down on another menu-item and keep exploring
with the mouse held down (as though you'd never let it go in the first
place. However, on the Start menu, you can't do this - you start
dragging things around.

In other MS products (Office, DevStudio...) you can re-arrange menus
by dragging things around with the alt-button held. Works for toolbars
too, and even for moving commands between menus and toolbars. But
things don't re-arrange themselves while you're just looking.

Of course, in "customise" mode, you don't need the alt key, but then
you can't execute commands from the menus or toolbars - clicking on
them just selects them.

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

Again, Office and DevStudio have about a bazillion commands, and only
a small selection of commands by default. When you go into "customise"
mode, you get a list of potential commands, divided into
(single-depth) categories - File, Edit, View, Insert, Tools, Help,
Macros, and so on. I think it would be neat to have a floating window
with a hieraerchical list of Every Command Ever, and provide a way to
build standard GTK/GNOME menubars and toolbars out of collections of
Command objects.

Each Command has an Icon, a Name (appears next to menus or in toolbar
tooltips, a Description (appears in statusbar), and an accellerator
key. The command-list is a CList with columns for icon, name, and
accellerator. Double-click on a list-entry to perform that command, or
drag & drop to menu-bars and toolbars... right-click to "Do this"
(bold, default, same as double-clicking), and edit the accellerator.
Special commands (macros) might have "Edit macro..." too.

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