[kde-guidelines] Possible guidelines for buttons with menus

[Aurélien Gâteau]

Le lundi 5 août 2013 10:57:00 Heiko Tietze a écrit :
> Am Montag, 5. August 2013, 10:40:50 schrieb Aurélien Gâteau:
> > > But then it has the (in my opinion more relevant) drawback that the
> > > interaction and available features are not apparent to the user.
> > 
> > That is true for delayed menu buttons, but not for menu-only buttons:
> > there
> > is a down arrow on the right of the button, which I believe makes it clear
> > that this button is going to bring up a menu. Do you think it is still
> > confusing?
> 
> It's not confusing that there is something (maybe novices do not understand
> it intuitively), but why should funtions be hidden? I cannot imagine any
> use case where menu buttons are really neccessary (okay: useful). They are
> always replaceable by a combination of simple controls.

I think there is a need for a way to provide access to less-used actions 
without cluttering the interface. In the case of the Kate session dialog, it 
would look quite bulky if the "New Session" button was turned into two 
buttons: "New Session" and "New Session using Selected Session as Template" 
(granted one could reword the button to something shorter like "New Session 
Based on Selection", but it's still large)
 
> >Heiko and Thomas: Do you think segmented buttons would be a good addition
> >to our recommended controls?
> 
> It would be, perhaps, if we could recommend when it should be used and when
> not.

That's part of what I would like us to achieve: creating controls which are 
designed with guidelines in mind.

Aurélien