Re: [Usability] New Pathbar

[David Christian Berg <david sipsolutions net>]

>I don't see any advantage over the current layout. Why should we replace
> buttons by links? Buttons are way more obvious UI elements. You have to
> hover text to releveal that it is a link.
>If you are bound to use the keyboard anyway, isn't a simple ctrl-l
> reasonable?

Well, as for your points, Christian: You're right, the improvement over
the current situation isn't big, but it's there.
The widget has the same functionality as the button pathbar _and_ the
locationbar combined. And furthermore it is discoverable as both.


> Only on a minority of pages that are very badly designed. People 
> "shouldn't have to guess or scrub the page to find out where they can 
> click" <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040510.html>.
> 
> > Advanced users could go a step further and edit the text directly,
> 
> It would be rather annoying trying to edit text where clicking on the 
> part you wanted to change opened another folder.

I disagree with the first point, Matthew, and _do_ say that those links
in the entry widget are highly discoverable (just by hovering over them
you notice they are links and the arrows tell you it's not a simple text
entry) and that furthermore on webpages links don't have to be
underlined by default but distinguished by color. It is very good though
to have a prelight state of links to tell the user that this is an
active element.
Anyways: Your second point is very valid, and might cause some troubles.
Still with the feedback of a changing color and/or an underline users
will notice that it's not editable that easily. It must however be
possible to change a letter within those folder names. Therefore one
should be able to place the cursor at the arrows. There should be no
links.

This already also leads to Calum's remarks:

> to think about... it's easy to navigate a row of buttons in the  
> standard way using Tab (and Space to activate), but how would you  
> navigate and activate a list of hyperlinks in a text field?

After reading your email I've thought about this for a while and came to
the conclusion that the behaviour of text entries as is right now
actually is enough to navigate.
The Folder where the cursor is is always underline/colored and can be
activated by pressing enter. This should easily be discoverable through
the underline. Using Ctrl+RIGHT/LEFT navigates to the beginning of the
next/previous folder. Ctrl+DEL/BACKSPACE will delete one whole part of
the path.

There was something else I wanted to mention, but I forgot...


Take care!

David