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

[Mike McGavin]

Hi Jason and everyone.

On 12/03/06, Jason Harris <jharris at 30doradus.org> wrote:

> 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.

Has there been any consideration into putting those menu title details
into an Info Box for more immediate access?  Perhaps it could be
populated with the user's most recent left click, or by hovering over
something.  Maybe the user should have some control over which details
are displayed if they don't like the defaults, depending on what
they're most interested in.  The context menu could continue to
provide possible actions on an object, as it is now, but without the
titles.  This way, information's available about any selected object
quite quickly, and it's at least as straightforward to perform any
actions on that object as it is at present.

A down side is that it might result in some confusion with the
existing info box that describes the currently tracked object, and I'm
not sure how it would work for comparing details of two objects if
people need to do that.  There might be other ways around these
complications, though.  eg. If someone's consciously gone to the
trouble of tracking an object, perhaps the tracked-object info box
would replace the clicked-object info box, so there's only ever one of
them.

Personally I'm not sure about extra windows and dialogs except for
very detailed and specialised information that can't easily be
presented without them.  They tend to have a lot of display overhead
such as window title bars, close buttons, and blank padding space that
covers more of the map than seems necessary.  They also require a lot
of mouse or keyboard action to manipulate, as well as get out of the
way.  Idea's #1 and #2 both look as if they'd require at least two
clicks to see most of the options available, and probably three clicks
to do anything (as you mentioned)... at least the current menu only
needs two clicks to select actions.


Anyway, those are just my thoughts as a user.  I really appreciate all
the time and effort that you all put into this, and I'm sure it'll
work great no matter what's decided.


Thanks.
Mike.