Re: [Usability] New Menubars

[Anton Kerezov <ankere gmail com>]

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 2:18 AM, Philip Ganchev <phil ganchev gmail com> wrote:

This could be a disadvantage because it would interfere with
habituation. The user would always have to check if the command they
want is in the position they expect, in case the computer has learned
since the last time the user used the command.

Anton, sorry but I still do not understand the purpose of your idea.
It might help if you give an example use-case.  Is the purpose the
same as with my idea (text search for menu items and any other
commands)? If so, then I think we should evaluate and compare our
design choices. Do you agree?

I agree. This was just a thought about possible ways to go but I think that the best way for a start would be only search for commands (e.g. menuitems + desctiptions). One of the reasons why this was discussed was the possibility of the space not being enough to display all items. Do you have any ideas how this could be done?

 

How do I request the group: text search? Can it show commands (menu
items) that are in different menus. For example, when I type  "scal",
it will find "Layer -> Scale layer..." and "Image -> Scale image..."?

Yes text search that searches for all the text available in the current menus + descriptions.

 

And a huge advantage in finding the action you want (compared to
looking through the menus) and streamlining the user input (compared
to mousing through the menus).

Natural language may be good, but it is likely to be difficult to
design and implement well. We should pick the low-lying fruit (text
search) now, thus creating a framework to incorporate NL with more
thought.

I totally agree with you here. It is good to start simple and evolve the system over time when people learn how to use it and request more intelligent ways of showing the items.

I will write use cases but wouldn't it be better to make a wiki page? And if yes where I can do that (which section so on ...)?

-- 
Anton