kcombobox wheelmouse scrolling

[Thomas Zander]

On Sun, Sep 29, 2002 at 01:09:24PM -0600, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Sunday 29 September 2002 12:08, Thomas Zander wrote:
> > I don't believe the solution of automatic definition of scrollwheel-scope
> > will work; the solution presented (by Aaron) will be too subtile to become
> > something the user learns as logical. If the user does not learn the
> > 'mental-model' behind the GUI (s)he will not be able to forsee when to
> > expect. In other words; the user will sometimes get unexpected results, and
> > loose confidence in the GUI.
> 
> the point is not to get the user to learn, but to have the UI react in a way 
> the user would expect it to, namely:
> 
>  o if scrolling the web page, continue to scroll it
>  o if purposefully positioned over a combobox, scroll it

And my point is that you can never get software to follow the intentions of the
user correctly; and if you can't do it correctly then your users will not like
the way the system behaves.

Remember the excellent point Mathias said in relation to kwin 'I intent to 
implement focus follows mind soon'

The mouse positon is not where the focus of the user is. You point this out
yourself in the fact that the toolbars forward the events to the scrolling
of the document.
Hmm; I find it puzzeling that you propose that the all toolbars should work
internally consistent. But not all of the content area should act
consistently ?

> > And what about comboboxes that have a javascript 'onchange' event?
> 
> if you position over them and scroll, they change... 

So, take the www.cnn.com site. It has a combobox on language selection. Do you
think the scrolling via the mousewheel can be done in such a way that the user
gets what he expects?
Hint; waiting to think is not an option; the site allready refreshed to the
language of 'your choice'..


> that said, the best would be if a selection is only made after a certain 
> period of innactivity, allowing the wheel to act like "spinning a dial". the 
> text entries would change as the wheel is spun, but only when the wheel stops 
> (as defined by a timeout period) would that selection cause an effect to 
> occur.

Again; the changes that a mistake is made is high, the mistake will in lots
of cases lead to a big confusion since lots of website go to a different page
on selection.
I don't think this is appriciated.


I remember you once said that the choice should be made on merit. Does the
addition of this feature (mousewheel in a webpage) give enough merit to allow
potential confusion and the inevitable inconsistencies to exits?
I tend to say 'no'. And I read enough Slashdot comments to know lots of people
agree with me.

-- 
Thomas Zander   zander at planescape.com
We are what we pretend to be