Widget user interface comments

[Michael Babcock <mbabcock la creatureshop henson com>]

Here's a list of ways I think Gtk widgets can be improved from a
user's point of view.  This is with Gtk 1.0.5.

Button
------

When you press in a button, a black line is drawn inside the top and
left edge of the button. To my eye this looks sloppy and out of place
though I can't explain exactly why, or exactly how the appearance
should be. In general, Gtk widgets look better than most Unix widgets,
though I do worry a little that Rasterman and themes et al are more 
concerned with "look" than with "feel".

Entry
-----

Although you can doubleclick to select a word, you can't
doubleclick-drag to select multiple words a word at a time. 

When you have something selected, perhaps pressing the left arrow key
should move the cursor to the left of the selection, and the right
arrow key to the right of the selection, rather than just moving the
previously invisible cursor left or right inside the selection. I'm
not sure about this one, but it would be something to try. I vaguely
remember Windows doing this but don't have access to a contaminated
machine to check.

Scrollbar / Slider
------------------

Clicking the down arrow or pagedown area  of a scrollbar should wait a
bit after the first scroll before continuously moving while the mouse
button is held down. It is too hard to scroll just one line.

The middle mouse click correctly causes a jumps to the selected position
on
the scrollbar, but you can't click-drag the middle mouse button
around. You have to click the middle button once, and then
explicitly grab the handle to drag. I use the middle drag feature
all the time in Motif apps and it is disconcerting when it doesn't
work in Gtk apps.

I think scrollbars should by default be wider. I know we're following
Motif, but I think new users find them too small.

Menus
-----

This one might be controversial. While I do like the menu items
highlighting when the mouse moves over them, I don't think submenus
should automatically pop up without a click (obviously, if you drag
the mouse to use menus, they will have to). The problem is that its
too hard to "thread the needle" by moving the mouse pointer horizontally
to the right to the submenu without moving it up or down to make the
menu disappear. Another solution (Apple approach) is to have a little
delay before the menu disappears after you move off the item, although
I worry about the interface feeling sluggish.

When a menu is displayed, clicking on the title again should make it
disappear.

Lists
-----

Keyboard navigation seems weird. Sometimes moving down with the down
arrow key doesn't scroll you down.

Radio, Check Button
--------------------

I have seen new users confused about which visual state means on
versus off. We all are familiar with the Motif look, but I think
perhaps by default, when check and radio buttons are "in" they should
draw a mark in black inside to make it obvious.

Tree
----

Personally I think the Mac look, with the left or down triangle and no
dotted lines looks much cleaner than the windows look implemented in
Gtk, with the + and - and the lines connecting everything. I think you
can change this is your program (haven't checked though) but I'm
talking about default experience from a user point of view, not what a
developer can do.

Comments?

--
Michael Babcock
mbabcock@la.creatureshop.henson.com