Re: [Usability] Tab implementation review

[Kalle Vahlman <kalle vahlman gmail com>]

2009/2/24 Calum Benson <Calum Benson sun com>:
>
> On Sat, 2009-02-14 at 22:46 +0100, Florian Ludwig wrote:
>
>> The right-click:
>> I expect nothing to open or change if I right click something but show
>> me a menu what I could do but don't do anything so far. Similar to right
>> clicking the "location button list" in nautilus, a link in epiphany or a
>> window in the window-list.
>
> Hmm.  Do you expect a file in nautilus to be selected when you
> right-click? Because that's what's happens (and that behaviour is the
> same on most other platforms I can think of)...
>
> In fact, I thought there was a HIG guideline somewhere that said right
> click should mean "select and show context menu", but I can't find it
> right now.  Assuming there is, though, it sounds like we're saying it's
> not as simple as that.  So what should the guideline be instead?

I didn't find a mention like that in the HIG (in fact all instances
talked about selecting with left and only talked about the menu for
the right button), but I think it really really needs to be there.

Right-clicking inherently is location-aware (you get a different menu
if you right-click on different windows etc.) so it needs to ensure
the visual feedback is sensible too.

In the nautilus example, you can't have an item selected and then
popup a menu with file actions that would affect the one next to it.
Similarily, I think it's much clearer that you move and close the tab
that's active than the one that is in the background. Though, you
could of course just focus the tab to indicate that (like ephy does
for links).

Or you could even make the popup menus indicate more clearly which UI
control they actually belong to, simply having one corner of the
rectangular window placed where the mouse was clicked is just not
enough. That would still leave the other item selected, so it wouldn't
be a big win.

-- 
Kalle Vahlman, zuh iki fi
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