[Marble-devel] Review Request: rework lmb and rmb menus

Sun Nov 6 17:53:34 UTC 2011

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Hi,

> The lmb as well as the rmb menu offer actions regarding the current geo position. 
> In particular, the lmb menu offers "Copy Coordinates" and "Address Details", 
> while the rmb menu offers "Add Bookmark" and "Set Home Location". 
> As a result, neither of the menus have precise duties, 

Well, this is not quite correct. There has been a defined distinction between the lmb and rmb menu:

The lmb menu 

- focuses on presenting plain information for the point clicked on.
(The idea had been that once you click on e.g. Munich, you get a menu displaying "Munich", "Bavaria", "Germany", "Earth". Where each of these items would be clickable and an info box pops up. This is great for educational purposes but you might argue that Marble is not only targeted at that use case )  
- as such provides features that can't be triggered straight-forward elsewhere in the UI

The rmb menu

- focuses on convenience for advanced users: it provides advanced higher level actions which operate on the current location (and don't just display info inherent to the location). The actions provided in the rmb are also always duplicated in the (Marble) application's main menu.
- provides actions which are necessary for the case that the application using the widget "forgets" to add means to do some stuff regarded essential (proper credits via about box, toggling of info boxes).

As a policy (which is also regarded by other main stream applications) the rmb menu should always be considered optional for the basic work flows of the application. So rmb actions are just there for convenience. The reason is this: There is a significant amount of people out there who almost never use the right mouse button. I'm not talking about Mac Users here (where there is not supposed to be one), but casual Windows/Linux users.

So in Marble these people should still be able to work with Marble and be able to enjoy all the major features which are there (and I think considering this point is even essential for a reworked menu).

> Moreover, this patch also addresses [...]

This patch changes the basic idea behind the two menus. That is fine if there is a good other solution. So far any suggestions made had just tried to move over the lmb menu entries to the rmb menu.

What I like about this patch: 
- It still keeps the lmb menu for the cases where it's  necessary.
- It still keeps the default info dialog accessible with the lmb.
- It reduces the size of the rmb menu (yay!) - at least on first glimpse.
- It groups all the coordinate-intrinsic actions in a nice submenu.
- It keeps the "more advanced" functionality (much of which is accessible via the main menu) in submenus.

What I dislike a bit:
- It gives up a bit of the old idea behind the menu distinction. However one might argue that this distinction was too much motivated by the "educational" use case. 
- It hides the coordinates and "Copy coordinates" action. However one might argue that the "Copy" action is also placed in the RMB menu in all other apps.
- It introduces another submenu which makes it harder to navigate for some casual users.

I wonder though whether we should prepend the coordinate line with another line that has "Position:" written in tiny font. This might look nicer and would increase the hit area.

Bottom line: I think I like your suggested solution. You've managed to come up with a nice way to come up with a mix of the benefits of the old behavior and a new approach which nicely tackles a few other issues. Please give still a few hours for thoughts and feedback before you commit. :-) Thanks!

- Torsten Rahn

On Nov. 6, 2011, 11:55 a.m., Bernhard Beschow wrote:
> 
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> This is an automatically generated e-mail. To reply, visit:
> http://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/103053/
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> 
> (Updated Nov. 6, 2011, 11:55 a.m.)
> 
> 
> Review request for Marble.
> 
> 
> Description
> -------
> 
> The lmb as well as the rmb menu offer actions regarding the current geo position. In particular, the lmb menu offers "Copy Coordinates" and "Address Details", while the rmb menu offers "Add Bookmark" and "Set Home Location". As a result, neither of the menus have precise duties, creating ambiguities, which this patch addresses. Moreover, this patch also addresses bug 282394.
> 
> The changes in the patch include:
> * concentrate all actions regarding the current geo position in the rmb menu
> * remove unimplemented planet action
> * use the lmb menu only for resolving ambiguities when opening links
> 
> The lmb menu only appears when there are ambiguities. Otherwise, the internal browser is opened immediately or the lmb menu is ignored when there are no actions available.
> 
> The rmb menu got a new sub menu which includes the four actions from above. See screenshot for details.
> 
> 
> This addresses bug 282394.
>     http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=282394
> 
> 
> Diffs
> -----
> 
>   src/lib/MarbleWidgetPopupMenu.h 3b0c643 
>   src/lib/MarbleWidgetPopupMenu.cpp 762c406 
> 
> Diff: http://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/103053/diff/diff
> 
> 
> Testing
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> 
> The menus make more sense.
> 
> 
> Screenshots
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> 
> LMB menu resolving ambiguities
>   http://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/103053/s/324/
> new RMB menu
>   http://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/103053/s/325/
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Bernhard Beschow
> 
>

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