making kickoff have full-width selection rects (on hover)

[Will Stephenson]

On Wednesday 27 February 2008 17:54:23 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Wednesday 27 February 2008, Will Stephenson wrote:
> > * it's consistent with every other selectable item on the desktop, but
>
> you are using kmail. look at the selection of a threaded item in the header
> list. so .. no. it's not.

That selection covers all the text and the icon.   I said consistent with, not 
identical to.  

(And the kmail case needs fixing, it's ugly when you have Date, Subject, 
Sender as your column order)

> > especially pulldown menus.
>
> and pulldown menus have headers, search edits, tabs and disk usage bars?
> kickoff is as much a menu as krunner is.

Apples and oranges, I'm comparing the menu component of kickoff to menus 
elsewhere.  And as above, consistency != identity.

> > * conversely, only highlighting the text could give the impression that
> > the text is something separate to the icon.
>
> did you think that? have you found someone who has?

Yeah, I thought that.  My list starts "I believe".

> > * other menus also display icons and other elements without colour
> > clashing.
>
> again, you're using kmail. start a mail, open the edit menu, mouse over
> Undo and, if you're using the default oxy colour scheme, tell me that there
> isn't a wonderful clash of blue on blue.

I believe that's an instance of "proof by example", but usefully illustrates 
that the oxy guys need to define a highlight colour and test icons on that as 
a background.

> and that's not something that you are going to sit there and read through
> and which isn't 32px+ in size.
>
> when the highlight was behind the icon, i often found it just fugly:
> konqi's icon is esp bad there.

Maybe draw the icon on a base() background and then draw the highlight.  
Didn't agateau try this?

> > Fuel gauges in items are a solvable problem
>
Disk usage bars.
>
> > * highlights are supposed to be eyecatching:
>
> yes, that's really the whole point. and why? to draw the eye to the
> importance of the selected item. this has nothing to do with being full
> width, however. not in the least. why do i say that? because notice that
> nobody is saying "i can't figure out which item is highlighted".

As you say, that's not under discussion.  

> and if you are thinking about reply with "maybe they just haven't said it"
> don't even bother because prior to 4.0 we did have a hard-to-notice
> highlight and guess what feedback we got, hard and heavy? yep: "i can't
> figure out which item is highlighted."

Nor is this relevant.

> so the current system is indeed effective in the real world, whic mean this
> is basically a discussion about usability for something that that works
> making it really a discussion mostly about aesthetics. =)

Ah, now we are on the same page!  All my arguments except the 
not-selecting-the-selected-icon one are aesthetic ones.  I should have 
pointed that out at the beginning, but I'll do that now: "I believe full 
width selections are more aesthetically pleassing because..."

> there are things in kickoff that are not working for people (speaking of
> which, i need to make the new "breadcrumbs" clickable; binner is scheduled
> to work on the free resize thing ... and your tab top/bottom/left/right
> patch helps there as well). it'd be cool to concentrate a bit more on those
> things instead imho.
>
> and if we really want to improve the look 'n feel, doing something about
> the fugly frame would be a decent idea.

You didn't HAVE to respond to this thread either, I'm just taking a break from 
the washing up here.

> > * a full width highlight doesn't cramp the item it highlights, a bit of
> > empty space between the borders of the highlight and its contents makes
> > the whole thing easier on the eye
>
> strawman, as that was never an issue.

It can't be a strawman, it's presented as my opinion, not yours.

> > * a full width highlight doesn't create the impression of a jumble of
> > differently sized rectangles whilst mousing over a list of items
>
> given that it maps directly to the size of the thing being highlighted ...

I meant the group of rectangles formed by highlighting a number of items.  If 
I mouse down a list, I get an impression of all the highlights.  Since they 
are differently sized, it's not harmonious.

> and again, highlighting semantically useless space in a way that emphasizes
> it seems rather fun.

I beg to differ, IMO the highlighted negative space is actively semantically 
useful in drawing attention to the highlighted item and a minimal highlight 
actively distracts from it by creating discord.  (to restate a couple of 
earlier points)

>
> i half suspect that eventually one of the people standing behind the "full
> width!" idea will actually produce a patch with a full width highlighting
> that is acceptable in terms of not being eye catching in the extreme,
> having very low colour saturation, looking pretty and not interfering with
> either the text or drawing one to the "vast ocean of emptyness" between the
> text and the edge of the menu.
>
> until that point this is really a useless conversation.

I think Aurelien did that already, so the conversation is useful in forming a 
consensus.  Unless it just trails on to a point of last man standing...

Right, back to the washing up...

Will


-- 
Will Stephenson
IRC: Bille