Re: [Usability] Placing context menus

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On Tue, 2004-05-04 at 23:24, Mariano Suárez-Alvarez wrote:

> GTK now(?) has a standard shortcut, Shift+F10, to show the context menu
> of the focused widget. It is by default placed where the pointer is, but
> GTK allows one to place it anywhere else, if one wants to. It's nice to
> have it put near the pointer, but it's nice to get it placed where the
> widget that opened it is—it's its context menu, after all—but you
> clearly can't get both things at the same time... Should one pick one
> over the other?

>From the HIG:
"Show keyboard-invoked menus, windows and tooltips near the object they
relate to, but without hiding or obscuring the object to which the menu
or tooltip refers. In GNOME, popup menus are activated with Shift-F10,
and tooltips with Ctrl-F1."

Apps that show keyboard-invoked popup menus at the pointer location
rather than the object's location are broken (especially wrt
accessibility), as there's no guarantee that the user is using any sort
of pointing device-- so the pointer might not even be on the same
physical screen as the object in question.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            Java Desktop System Group
http://ie.sun.com                      +353 1 819 9771
 
Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems