Re: GtkMenu and cursor change

["Sergio A. Kessler" <sak tribctas gba gov ar>]

Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com> el día 12 Feb 2001 22:51:35 -0500, 
escribió:

>"Gene Z. Ragan" <gzr ix netcom com> writes:
>
>> List comrades,
>> 
>> Is there a good usability reason that GtkMenu replaces the standard mouse
>> pointer with a slightly larger, mirrored cursor?
>> I realize that GTK has historical roots as a free replacement of Motif 
and
>> this is the way that Motif treated the cursor when the user selected a 
menu
>> and moved the mouse over it. Is there a strong usability reason for
>> retaining this feature?  
>
>Actually, GTK+-1.0 didn't have this feature - I added it for GTK+-1.2
>because I noticed Netscape doing it and thought it was sort of neat.
>As I recall now, the points that appealed to me were:
>
> - Doesn't obscure the menu items

windows, mac are doing fine (better?) without this...

> - Informs the user that they are in "menu selection mode" - since
>   the behavior while selecting a menu is quite different than
>   other 

windows, mac users are doing fine (better?) without this...

>I assume that Motif does it for the same reasons.

I don't think motif is "the one" to look for good usability...

>> No other modern windowing toolkit changes the mouse
>> cursor during a menu operation.  This includes Windows, MacOS, OSX and 
BeOS.
>> There are real usability reason for not changing the shape of the mouse
>> cursor during a menu selection operation.
>
>Which are? 

there are at least two flaws if the gtk menu selection that make 
really hard for newbies to use it:

- the cursor jumping rigth & left, when you are comfortable aiming
  with the cursor inclined to the left, suddenly it changes to the
  rigth for no good reason (or not good enough).

- to select a subitem, gtk doesn't do a pause in the item (the parent)
  (like windows does for example) and if you try to reach the subitem
  diagonally, it hard to not select another parent item, with the efect
  that another submenu (that you don't want) appear, making the
  selection of what you want, only available to those who master
  mouse movements.

regards,
sergio