Re: [Usability] regaining pixels blingfully

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Wed, 7 Mar 2007, Liam R E Quin wrote:

> Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2007 18:11:03 -0500
> From: Liam R E Quin <liam holoweb net>
> To: usability gnome org
> Subject: [Usability] regaining pixels blingfully
>
> A thought for people who like to autohide their gnome panel...
> what about autohide for toolbars and/or menu bars?
>
> There are obvious issues I see...
> (1) distracting if they unhide when you don't want them to
> (2) need a visual affordance so (sighted) users can see they're there
> (3) the affordance needs to be large enough to be easy to activate when
>     you want to.
>
> I remember that Netscape years ago played with click-to-hide/show
> toolbars, but (1) they didn't slide back smoothly, so it was hard to
> understand what was happening, and (2) it wasn't the whole toolbar area,
> but individual toolbars, so it was confusing.
>
> Any thoughts?

Microsoft have been doing something like this in some of their products
such as Windows Media Player and I think some of the software in Vista.
This means (in theory at least) the default views of a program are much
simpler and less confusing for average users and the more advance
functionality is a little more hidden away.  I just find it annoying but
maybe that's just me.


-- 
Sincerely

Alan Horkan

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