Activity Screen : Resize and Dragging

[Marco Martin]

On Monday 18 July 2011, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Monday, July 18, 2011 15:21:24 Marco Martin wrote:
> > On Monday 18 July 2011, Fania Jöck wrote:
> > > For resizing of boxes, I think the user needs a little hint, that this
> > > feature is possible. Currently no test user got that feature, if he
> > > didnt watch it before. Normally the edges get just a small icon, that
> > > indicates the "grip", see scribble for two possible icons:
> > > http://share.basyskom.com/contour/UIDesign/Contour_ResizeBox.jpg. For
> > > me the first row with the little dots is a better symbol; the arrows
> > > indicate more an enlargement in 2 directions, but our feature
> > > currently supports only extension in a horizontal direction.
> > 
> > here is an attempt of a resize handle.
> > http://wstaw.org/m/2011/07/18/plasma-desktopxO2158.jpg
> > 
> > probably looks a bit too noisy.. maybe with a single dot, or that dot
> > looking somewhat triangular would look better...
> 
> so much visual noise :(

yep, i agree :/
i would love to strip all that chrome to almost 0, but it's a difficult 
balance between elegance and something quite arcane, i guess...

> to show 4 items in two groups we have:
> 
> * 6 arrows
> * 2 triangles of dots
> * two buttons: Add Item and Configure (do we really even need text there i
> wonder?)
> * two titles with underlines
> * a large title
> 
> i know we're still at the "making things work" stage, but i am already
> wondering if Add and Configure could be stripped of text and put next to
> the main title? esp since that is also where the button bar for the

i would love having them without text, the issue was that a plus could be 
confused with the add activity plus, is not too much clear indeed what they do 

if they are on the left instead, it probably should buttons followed by title, 
since they would move when changing the activity name (another thing could be 
the activity title in the panel)

> can we do something else with the recommendations other than another
> thumb-tab on the side of the screen? e.g. just another button with Add and
> Configure?

hmm, i kinda like the current simmetricity, i think any change that would 
occur there, should maintain a look as symmetric as possible

> 
> can we make the switcher arrow something more visually descriptive and more
> beautiful than an arrow?

could be an icon, a label, or...
notning ;)

something that i would love, but *really* risks to be so arcane is just having 
invisible drag areas, so the message would be that things would come up when 
swiping on edges of the screen (maybe even all 4 edges, and yes, n9 influence 
there ;) 

when there are new recommendations, a side glow could appear, similar to 

> if a drag thumb is shown on the item groups, how subtle can we make them?
> do we even want to put something like this on the UI forever when it's
> really an issue of communicating to the user _once_ that you can resize
> these things from the edge(s)?

maybe a single dot ~90% transparent could be bearable enough, i also kinda 
wanted to have resize by pinch, that could conflict with zooming tough (if 
zooming is something that makes sense there, i'm still not convinced with 
that;)

in the end, i kinda like semi-hidden features, that can be discovered only by 
watching a video or by chance (without something screaming its existence), is 
also true that this kind of magic features can also be quite frustrating ;)

Cheers,
Marco Martin