Usability questions for Mandelbrot

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Wednesday 08 April 2009, Benoit Jacob wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a couple usability questions.
> The Mandelbrot wallpaper has 2 modes: "locked" and "unlocked".
> In locked mode, it behaves like an ordinary wallpaper. In unlocked
> mode, the view can be moved by mouse d&d and mouse wheel.
>
> Question 1.
>
> In locked mode, should mouse wheel do nothing? Or should it have the
> default effect which is, cycle through virtual desktops?

if the mouse event is not used by the wallpaper, you should not call 
accepted() on the event. this lets it pass through and the widget/containment 
using the wallpaper can then do whatever it wants with it.

whether or not that results in cycling through desktops or not is an 
implementation detail that the wallpaper should care about. :)

> Question 2.
>
> In unlocked mode, should the mouse pointer become a little hand (or
> something like that) to indicate that the view can be dragged? Or
> should we keep the default pointer?
>
> Argument in favor of default pointer: it might be annoying to see that
> little hand most of the time, since we're talking about a large
> prominent element of the desktop.
> Argument in favor of special pointer (like a hand): gives a clue that
> dragging is possible (though it doesn't give a clue that zooming is
> also possible).

sounds like we have a documentation problem, and that we should have a way to 
tell the user what they can do with a particular wallpaper. this probably 
makes the most sense in the configuration? perhaps this could go into the 
.desktop file as part of the Comment= and it could be harvested from there and 
shown in the UI.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Software

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