Cc'ing gnome-accessibility-list too...
On 28 Nov 2007, at 23:23, Hans Petter Jansson wrote: > I've been discussing accessibility/usability with visually impaired > users lately, and one thing that came up, and that I believe to be > low-hanging fruit, is the problem of windows being bigger than the > screen in one or both dimensions. > > This happens frequently for visually impaired users, since they > generally have very large fonts. > > I was told by one user that the way he worked around this was by going > to the control panel, choosing a smaller font temporarily, moving the > window, then setting the big font again. Of course, he was very > happy to > hear about the alt+drag shortcut. > > Which made me wonder if there's a more discoverable way of moving > windows around when they're too big/partially off-screen. > > One idea that came up was automatically adding scrollbars to the > windows, but I don't see how that could work reliably, and it would > clutter the screen and be error-prone/hard to do technically. > > A better idea might be something like the following logic in the > window > manager: > > IF window is focused AND > pointer is pushing against the edge of the screen AND > window has area off that edge of the screen AND > user is not dragging > THEN > move the window in the opposite direction of the edge being pushed > > So e.g. if you have a focused window which is partially off the > right-hand side of the screen, and you push your pointer against that > side, bumping into the edge, the window will move to the left until > you > can see its right-edge frame. The rate of movement would be equal > to the > number of pixels the pointer "wants" to move off-screen at each > increment. Only the focused window would be affected. > > I think this would be a lot more discoverable and useful for > everyone - > not just visually impaired users - and it looks like all the required > information is available to the window manager, so it shouldn't be > terribly hard to implement. > > Thoughts? > > -- > Hans Petter > > _______________________________________________ > Usability mailing list > Usability@gnome.org > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability -- CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer Sun Microsystems Ireland mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] GNOME Desktop Team http://blogs.sun.com/calum +353 1 819 9771 Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list Usability@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
