-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Philipp Wendler wrote on 15/04/10 14:18: >... > Am 15/04/10 14:15, schrieb Matthew Paul Thomas: >... >> But even though (a variation of) that guideline has been around since >> Windows 95, it hasn't worked out well. Many users have given up on >> left-clicking on notification area items -- probably, I think, because >> the left-click action wasn't predictable or memorable enough. Instead, >> they right-click to get the menu every time. "What? You can left-click >> on that thing and it does something different from right clicking? >> Dude, why didn't anybody tell me this? I've been doing it the hard way >> all this time!" >> <http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2009/05/01/9581563.aspx> > > For me this shows that it is not worth trying to let the indicators > behave exactly like a single other UI component. This interaction > pattern is the same as for almost all icons in Windows (desktop, start > menu, files in the explorer etc., with toolbars being probably the > single big exception) and for these icons everybody knows how to use > it. But indicators look somewhat different and users expect them to do > something different, so they don't expect indicators to support the > same interaction pattern.
How do they look different? The only difference I can see is that they have icons in their titles. So does the Applications menu. > And I think this is the same for our indicators, > the users will not expect them to behave exactly like menus, because > they look different and they are there for a different purpose. So why > bother restricting the indicators to plain menus? To make them consistent with each other. > However, I do not support the "users don't use it, so we don't need to > implement it" conclusion one might draw from this article. On Windows, > altough there is this guideline, there is some inconsistency between > different indicators, and some of the users might have experienced > unwanted actions to be executed on left click, so they trained > themselves to only use right click. Also they need to know about the > right-click menu, because some options are available only there. So > it's either "know both of them" or "know the right click". That wasn't the problem: the problem was that the menu was geekier than people were wanting, because the designers were expecting them to be left-clicking instead and they weren't. I expect the same would happen here: programmers would say "yeah, my menu is complicated, but you can just middle-click". - -- Matthew Paul Thomas http://mpt.net.nz/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAkvNeakACgkQ6PUxNfU6ecoLcACfUX/m8aB6WmI+ftWzuYXenRs2 ZLYAn1Q0bISwUupaI0D3LPE0PZRfi2d6 =SS95 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ayatana Post to : ayatana@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ayatana More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
