Re: Panel UI - startmenu productivity thoughts

[Adam Elman <aelman users sourceforge net>]

At 4:37 PM +0200 8/31/01, Dominik 'Aeneas' Schnitzer wrote:
> erm :-), I tried to illustrate this on
> http://www.schnitzer.at/dominik/gnome/qstart.jpg
>
> So -- if a user moves the mouse in the startmenu over say the "Internet"
> folder, the Internet Folder contents opens and in addition to now, the
> most recently/often started application is automatically selected or
> highlighted too.
> If the user now wants to launch exactly this (highlighted) most
> recently/often application, he just has to click on the "Internet"
> folder and doesn't have to search/select and click it as usual. If the
> user likes to start another app, it's buissines as usual.

Hmm.  I like this idea.  I'm assuming, btw, that the way that the 
"default" (i.e. most recent/most frequently used) app would be 
actually launched would be a _second_ click on the submenu title, 
right?  So the behavior would be:

Single click on foot/Programs menu: open menu
Single click on "Internet": open Internet folder.  "Mozilla" is 
already highlighted.
Second click on "Internet": launch Mozilla.

If, instead of that second click, the user moved the mouse over the 
submenu, it would select and launch whatever app was under the 
pointer, as normal.

I definitely think it's important not to _move_ menu items to be 
closer to the mouse pointer around as Liam suggested: it's not just 
bad for accessibility, it's bad for usability in general.

It'd be nice, though, if there was some extra visual feedback when 
the item was selected, re MacOS's little flashing of a selected menu 
item, since the item being selected is actually not the item directly 
under the mouse cursor.  Still, I think that as long as the launched 
item is highlighted, and it requires an explicit second click on the 
submenu title, this feature would likely be fairly convenient without 
seriously hurting usability.  Right now, btw, clicking on a submenu 
title after the submenu is open appears to do nothing.

One potential problem with this is that if the user gets into the 
habit of, say, double-clicking the Internet folder to launch Mozilla, 
but then launches another app in the folder one day, it might cause 
them to start up the wrong app the next time they go and do their 
usual habit.  But at least things aren't moving around, and the 
visual feedback of the submenu opening with the appropriate item 
highlighted should make it fairly clear what's going on.

Later,
Adam
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