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Ubuntu rips up drop-down menus

pcpro.co.uk

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Re: Ubuntu rips up drop-down menus

#61

Post by ugh »

kiloaper wrote: post #25
MarkMc wrote: post #11

Two things: 1. OS X already does this in the 'Search' option of the Help menu. 2. Menus are a useful way to discover the main features of a program. That is, the user can be in 'browsing' mode, not just 'searching' mode.

I haven't seen the OSX Help menu but I've seen this feature implemented in several other program on Windows and Linux years ago. They don't seem to catch on but I'm not sure why. Maybe it's habit or the fact search seems like more effort or the need to know the exact name for something or that people prefer the 'presence' that menus give to options. Personally I think it's great, as long as there's an option to resto…

What’s great about OS X’s approach is that it’s always there, in every app. (Some apps disable it which is a good way to make me angry.) Especially when you open up a brand new app or one you are not using frequently it can be frustrating to get your bearings. I can, for example, never remember where I can lock or group objects (I’m not even sure whether those commands are usually in a consistent place), the search is a good way to find out whether that functionality is available and where I can find it, also for future reference. Scanning menus for a specific command when I have no idea where it is is very frustrating for me.

This wouldn’t really work if every app had to implement this feature on its own, probably in different places and with slightly different behavior. Even if the behavior were consistent you still could never be sure whether you can search in the first place, that uncertainty is in my experience a good way to make sure a feature will never get used.

This seems like a great OS level feature.

Re: Ubuntu rips up drop-down menus

#62

Post by soosh »

marchdown wrote: post #52
soosh wrote: post #19

Random question -- does any operating system or application, having noticed you did something the hard way, say, "hey, next time, hit Ctrl-% when you want to do that?"

Both Windows and OS X have conventions in place to help with discoverability. Windows menus items have certain letters underlined, and you can hit Alt+underlined letter to open a menu, then Alt+letter to select an item or submenu. It provides both discoverability and keyboard-based navigation. OS X places hotkeys at the far right of every menu item which has a hotkey equivalent.

sure, discoverability. I guess what I want as a user is for Excel to tell me, "you're formatting a lot of cells the same, have you heard about format painter?" ... though as Clippy that was a little obnoxious.

Re: Ubuntu rips up drop-down menus

#63

Post by repsilat »

jessriedel wrote: post #44
crazygringo wrote: post #42

This completely violates one of the most important aspects of interface design: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance The article says: "One of the first things people do [when they get a new piece of software] is go through all the menus". Of course we do! That's how we learn what the program can do, not just how to do it. That's affordance.

After reading the brief history of this word, I think "discoverability" is a more recognized and less ambiguous term (albeit not as elegant). Also, I think if the HUD is added to, rather than replaces, the menus, then the HUD has the potential to significantly increase discoverability.

The entries in the HUD are definitely hierarchical, so I don't see a good reason why there can't be a way to browse through them "the old fashioned way". I wonder if the autocomplete suggests submenus, or just terminal entries?

I also hope this provides a nice, general way to introduce sciptability into applications, and that actions will be able to take arguments in the future. Or is that going too far?

Re: Ubuntu rips up drop-down menus

#64

Post by gcb »

rlpb wrote: post #49
gcb wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one reason I'm back to Debian for a year now.

The GNOME 3 shell is in the Ubuntu archive, same as Debian. AIUI, it's one "apt-get install" away. It seems a bit overkill to switch distro just because you don't like the default.

well, i did change from debian to ubuntu just because of the hardware drivers being there by default. So it's just logical.

Re: Ubuntu rips up drop-down menus

#65

Post by resnamen »

zerostar07 wrote: post #22

I got news for you ubuntu, CLIs have been doing that since ever. I wonder how people decide to do things like these: the purpose of a GUI is to do the work faster. Did anyone ever try to measure how much longer it takes to perform something by typing it instead of searching through menus? CLIs make sense when you have thousands of commands available, but a typical application has less than 50 commands available and i…

Wouldn't happen. Abandoning user choice and configurability seems to be in vogue with designers these days. We're just slouching our way toward our future as passive appliance users.

(I totally agree - either turn it into a keyboard shortcut, or a reserved 16x16px spyglass icon in the upper right hand corner of the menu bar...)

Re: Ubuntu rips up drop-down menus

#66

Post by kijin »

oconnore wrote: post #51
kijin wrote: post #28

> The HUD will be introduced with the next version of Ubuntu, 12.04 > Shuttleworth: "It will be interesting to see how users react to the changes." Please... this is an LTS release and your users aren't guinea pigs. I would hate to see another potentially promising feature get bad-mouthed all over the place due to premature release. Something like this needs months of usability testing. Couldn't they just wait until…

> Something like this needs months of usability testing. Seeing as how 12.04 is many months away, I don't understand your disagreement.

Features and UI for 12.04 will be frozen in less than a month from now.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PrecisePangolin/ReleaseSchedule

Re: Ubuntu rips up drop-down menus

#67

Post by hendrix »

barnaby wrote: post #48
hendrix wrote: post #39

Ubuntu 10.04LTS has gnome 2, it also had gnome-do which was awesome. Ubuntu 12.04 is going to have unity/blurify or whatever -- this is a gigantic change and what prompted me to switch back to windows 7 on my laptop. This is too much change too fast especially when Ubuntu is targeting people from windows that are accustomed to windows xp/7. TL;DR Ubuntu is moving wayyyy too fast.

I would argue it's not moving fast enough. We are in the middle of a very fast-paced transition in human-computer interaction. New form-factors like tablets are being adopted rapidly (nearly doubling over this holiday season alone). A speech-enabled HUD could become the killer app of hand-held devices. But it's still not on the market, and Canonical still do not have a way to install Ubuntu on tablets. E.g. They have…

OK, I think I might have worded things a bit awkward there. Actually I agree with you completely in that technology is not moving fast enough. Having a speech enabled android tablet/phone could actually compete with siri and would be very, very cool.

The point that I disagree on is that Mark Shuttleworth & CO are releasing software every 6 months that in many cases (myself included) breaks comparability with hardware. This among other problems has IMO caused Ubuntu to fall to #2 on distrowatch, while Linux Mint which includes MATE and a much more customizable gnome 3 has risen to the top. If they can really make it against apple then more power to ‘em.

(yes I know Ubuntu does not include gnome 3 by default but both gnome 3 and unity depart from the traditional win95 style desktop)

Re: Ubuntu rips up drop-down menus

#68

Post by marchdown »

soosh wrote: post #62
marchdown wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both Windows and OS X have conventions in place to help with discoverability. Windows menus items have certain letters underlined, and you can hit Alt+underlined letter to open a menu, then Alt+letter to select an item or submenu. It provides both discoverability and keyboard-based navigation. OS X places hotkeys at the far right of every menu item which has a hotkey equivalent.

sure, discoverability. I guess what I want as a user is for Excel to tell me, "you're formatting a lot of cells the same, have you heard about format painter?" ... though as Clippy that was a little obnoxious.

That would be great. Do you know any other apps (other than emacs, that is) that provide a similar sort of discoverability? And on the similar note, is there a way to make emacs's tips be even more prominent?

Re: Ubuntu rips up drop-down menus

#69

Post by WayneDB »

shantanubala wrote: post #55
WayneDB wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drilling down to see leaves and then drilling back up to the root to see the next branch sounds tedious...unless I can do it the same exact way that it can be done now with a mouse and a normal menu (i.e. without clicking, just hovering). However, "hover" isn't a touch thing, so I bet that Ubuntu will make that functionality a 2nd class citizen or just cut it out altogether in favor of more a more tedious "touch orie…

Aren't drop-down menus technically the same as "drill-down" in terms of number of clicks? As long as you can use "breadcrumbs" that allow you to quickly access the hierarchy of menu items, it shouldn't require any additional clicks to get to the option you want.

Yes, drop-down menus are a drill-down system, but after the first click, you can see each subsequent menu's drop-down by simply hovering.

In a touch-oriented drill-down scenario, there's no concept of a hover, so you have to touch once to see every level of the menu.

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