#4908 NORM Never A: Basic Sugar UI primitive is bizarre: hover, then move, then click

[Zarro Boogs per Child]

#4908: Basic Sugar UI primitive is bizarre:  hover, then move, then click
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 Reporter:  gnu     |       Owner:  marco         
     Type:  defect  |      Status:  new           
 Priority:  normal  |   Milestone:  Never Assigned
Component:  sugar   |     Version:  Build 623     
 Keywords:          |    Verified:  0             
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 Sugar only has two ways of letting the user do something:  clicking
 directly on a visible object; or something much more bizarre and unusual.
 You move the mouse to the object, but don't click on it.  Hover there.
 Eventually, Sugar will pop up a menu of some sort (even though you didn't
 click anything).  Sometimes it comes up in several pieces (e.g. first a
 name, then a fraction of a second later, some menu items).  Now you can
 move the mouse onto that menu and click one of the popped-up things.

 I wondered why I was having trouble with this UI.  It's because nobody
 else ever does anything like this.  "Tooltips" pop up from hovering, but
 you can never click on them; they're informational only, and disappear
 when your mouse moves.  Everything else on every other UI I've used
 requires that you click on something before a menu will come up.  (Linux
 uses right-clicks; Mac uses ctrl-click; etc.)  You're free to move the
 mouse to anywhere on the screen, and bad things won't happen.  Nothing
 will pop up and obscure the thing under it that you were about to click,
 for example.  (If a tooltip obscures something, it doesn't matter much,
 since the click will go right through it.)

 E.g. you have the Journal and another activity running in the donut.  Your
 cursor is on the left side of the screen and you're slow at moving on the
 touchpad.  (Or maybe the touchpad is jumpy and so you're moving very
 deliberately.)  You want to resume the Journal, but as your mouse heads
 toward the Journal, it crosses the other activity.  Your mouse ends up
 stopping over the Journal, but meanwhile, the other activity's pop-up has
 obscured it, and will no longer let you click on what you just aimed for.
 If you were a faster expert at using a touchpad, you wouldn't have this
 trouble -- but not every kid is.  You end up having to move the mouse OFF
 the Journal, so the menu will pop down; but depending where you move it
 to, you could end up with a different menu popping up before you can get
 back to the Journal icon that you want to click.

 This pop-up interference tends to happen a lot on crowded Mesh View
 screens too.

 This form of pop-up seems like one of those random Sugar UI decisions that
 was made without much thought.  But gradually, everything in the UI is
 starting to get these pop-up menus, which make it a pervasive bizarreness
 in the interface.

 PS:  Touchscreens, like what Gen 2 is currently presumed to have, are
 really terrible at "hovering" without "clicking".

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Ticket URL: <http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/4908>
One Laptop Per Child <http://dev.laptop.org>
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