[Kstars-devel] RFC: new popup "menu"?

[Jason Harris]

Hello,

One of the changes in Qt4 is that it's no longer possible to add "title" items 
to a menu (these are non-clickable items with centered text).

In KStars, we had been using menu title items in our popup menu to present 
some brief information about the clicked object (its name, object type and 
rise/set/transit times).  The closest we can get to the old popup menu is to 
add these items as "disabled" actions, which looks pretty bad (see attached 
screenshot "kstars_popup.png").

So, I started thinking about how to implement menu title items, and the more I 
looked, the more it seemed I would basically have to reimplement my own menu 
widget from scratch.  

Then I started thinking about other ways to approach the problem.  Basically, 
we want to present a list of actions that can be performed on an object in an 
intuitive, easy to use way.  A context-sensitive popup menu works great for 
this, but maybe we can tweak the concept a bit and get something even better.

I have two ideas to present, both of which are similar to a popup menu in that 
they are small widgets that appear right under the mouse cursor when the sky 
map is right-clicked, and the widget contains information and actions related 
to the clicked object.

idea #1: see kspm_mockup1.png.  Object thumbnail image, name(s), type and 
constellation are shown in a box at the top of the widget.  Clicking on the 
"more..." text opens the Details window for this object.  Below are two 
panels, one showing available actions for this object, the other showing 
available image and URL links.

idea #2: see kspm_mockup2.png.  This is much more compact.  The top info panel 
is similar, except there is no "more..." link to open the Details window.  
The row of buttons along the bottom will behave like a menu bar: pressing one  
will open a menu containing actions to perform on the object, Image links, or 
WWW links.  This is pretty similar to the original popup menu, except the 
"title' section is a bit fancier, and the rest of the menu is organized into 
three submenus.  

Personally, I like the look of #2 better, but I don't know if people will find 
it less usable since the actions and links require an extra mouse click (or 
maybe just a mouse "hover", depending on how we implement it) to reach.

The idea is to make this widget behave very similarly to a regular popup menu: 
it appears on right-click, and disappears when the mouse is clicked anywhere 
outside of it.  However, I'd like to add a "tear off" feature: if the user 
drags the popup widget, then it becomes a non-modal dialog window (and gains 
window decorations that it otherwise wouldn't have).  The user could then 
have a number of these widgets present for the objects they are interested 
in.

I just thought of another idea (#3): we're duplicating the functionality of 
the Details window somewhat with these ideas.  Maybe it would be best to 
simply open the Details window of an object on right-click?  It could be 
reorganized to be more compact by default, so it doesn't cover up so much of 
the window.

Any thoughts on these ideas?

regards,
Jason

-- 
Jason Harris
jharris at 30doradus.org
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