On Wed, Dec 03, 2003 at 06:56:19PM +0100, Andre Poenitz wrote: > > > If you really want, you can add two or three generic items (undo inner > > > level, split inner box, merge adjacent boxes) but I doubt anybody ever > > > will use them as soon as he discovered the keyboaerd short cuts. > > > > If I saw such menu entries I would be completely lost. > > Hm. Tooltip 'Read section x.y in the Userguide if you are lost'.
Tooltips on menus are horrible. Furthermore, forcing the user into the manuals for such a simple basic editing is horrible. > > I'd just think "what the fuck?". It's thoroughly bizarre and if you > > can't see that there's really no point in trying to talk to you about > > this :( > > You seem to assume that any UI different from OO/Word is non-intuitive, > misleading etc. Sorry, I'm not. What I am saying is that when we do differ from what people are used to, we'd better a) have some really really good reasons for it b) better be really really careful to make it discoverable and easy to learn or people will just get annoyed and go back to the "far simpler" Word style of markup. > So what are menus good for in general? To find rarely used stuff I > suppose. Partially. The primary purpose of menus, though, is discoverability. > And if I am unsure about an item I just try it out and if the > result puzzles me I'll look it up in the man page. You should always try to imagine users as "intelligent, but very busy". If I have to constantly refer to the docs for basic editing operations, I'll just go use something else where the method is transparent and clear. > > > Direct manipulation? Of course. This removes the innermost box and > > > spits its contents into the box above. > > > > Please look up what "direct manipulation" means. > > Where? Dictionary? http://www.usabilityfirst.com/glossary/main.cgi?function=display_term&term_id=200 (Actually by that rather strict definition, neither way is, but certainly mine is a lot closer) regards john -- Khendon's Law: If the same point is made twice by the same person, the thread is over.
