[Sugar-devel] UI experiments: pop-up menus and hot corners

[Gary Martin]

Hi Mikus,

On 4 Jul 2010, at 04:32, Mikus Grinbergs wrote:

>> some current (ongoing) future design changes will remove this issue completely with
>> a full screen screen dialogue for deciding new/resume. One click on a home view activity
>> displays a gallery/journal like display of past work or a new blank template
> 
> My observation - on the XO, there is a VERY perceptible time lag between
> when the user makes a click (on an existing screen) and when the
> replacement screen gets presented to that user.  [It would not be so bad
> if the cursor changed shape to indicate "the system is working on your
> input" -- but as it is, the XO display might "freeze", or even switch
> (temporarily) to a completely unrelated session -- and the user must
> mentally refrain (for up to a number of seconds) from doing anything
> while waiting to see whether the expected screen will/will_not be shown.
> 
> [This time lapse in preparing a new full screen display on the XO seems
> to be worse with metacity than with matchbox.  For instance, with
> Paraguay's sugar 0.88 builds, the "activity being launched" screen
> sometimes never gets to pulse -- apparently, to get it shown might take
> as long as it does to prepare the actual activity session's screen !!]
> 
> 
> A major advantage of the menu (palette) on the XO is that as soon as the
> user clicks within that menu, the menu itself vanishes.  This gives the
> user IMMEDIATE visual feedback that "the system is working on your
> input" - and removes the "what is it doing?" doubt from the user's mind.

I do feel the pain...

But the fullscreen dialogue should do no more than the current hover palette, there is no excuse for its code to being perceptibility slower. It's not starting up the activity or triggering an enema of module imports and dbus messages, it's just showing a full screen 'new or resume past instance' UI, with pretty much just the same content as the current 'weight and then fight with the cursor' mini palette.

The down side is that every activity start would be then be two clicks, one to bring up the large dialogue (I like to think of it as a one page gallery), and one for new or resume choice... But that was partly the point, no one here could agree on a new or resume default behaviour, so there needs to be an extra user end decision, just to settle the UI feud and allow us move on, to more gainful tasks.

Regards,
--Gary