[thelist] Testing/suggestions wanted...

[Tom McMillen]

The menus system is experimental. Yes it has flaws, it
works very different
to most other menus systems I've ever seen, and
because of this loses a
lot of intuitivity for new users (although I think The
Sims uses a menu system
like this, but I've only seen screenshots).

I may have tried to put too much in at once.
Originally inspired by the
mozilla gestures (http://optimoz.mozdev.org/) and
their mention of pie menus.
I prefer the menu to only stay visible when you hold
the mouse button down
(right click behavior), others prefer the menu to stay
visible until you click
elsewhere (hence the left click behaviour) - not sure
which is best so I've put
both in. It would be nice to allow the user to pick an
option...
menu appears on right click/menu appears on left click
menu stays visible on click/menu only visible on mouse
down
menu only shown if you press the shift key and a mouse
buton etc...

but for now, it's still an experiment.
(http://www.beatthesystem.co.uk/)

> Works flawlessly in Mozilla 1.0. Apparently it's
> working in IE 5.5 too, so
>  good job on cross-browser support.

For all those who say it doesn't work in Mozilla on
Win32 - that's the browser
I used for all development!!! It does work for ME. I
use IE6 for MS Sites and a bit
of testing. It doesn't work in Opera. I still don't
know if it will work on a mac.

>
>  * I don't like the fact that it comes up on
> right-click. Many Web surfers,
>  myself included, regularly use right-click on
> ordinary document text to go
>  back, view source, download, etc. Your menu will
> either stop them from doing
>  that, or make a real mess on the screen when both
> your menu and the browser
>  menu come up at once.
>

There is code to catch the display of the context menu
and disable it for
both IE and Moz. I know lots of people like to use the
context menu - I love
right click open in new tab.

*NOTE* I've changed the menu so that if you right
click over a link you will
get the standard browser context menu. (Yes this makes
the menu more inconsistent,
and possibly more confusing)

You can *Still* left click and drag over text to
select it, the menu *won't*
appear.


> Yeah, Tom I missed that one, and he brings up a good
> point about left click too..hmm. What I am
> wondering is if maybe you can trigger it some other
> way. Ideas off the top - the [+] thing you see
> for rating pages..maybe something similar or
> something that comes up when the mouse stops..which
> has problems of its own
>
>  * The "circular" organization of menu items looks
> sufficiently cool, but
>  again, you're breaking a very deeply ingrained UI
> paradigm: in this case,
>  that menu items are (pseudo)linear. If I were a
> user, I would be afraid to
>  take my mouse off any of the boxes in the circle,
> because in Windows, when
>  you take the mouse off a menu, it disappears.
>

I used to have a RISC OS (Acorn) computer, I like the
way the menu
is immediately under the mouse when you click (used to
be middle
button on RISC OS).

I agree the menu system breaks with many standard UI
rules
and certainly wouldn't suggest using it on any
commercial sites,
it will just confuse people, but for a personal site
(as long as you
have some other form of navigation) it's quirky.


> I still think you can make it work though, if things
> are somehow labeled so clearly you don't
> mistake it, and at some point you do get to a fairly
> linear list. Frankly I like to see something
> different work if it could.
>
>
>  * The "back" link should look different from the
> others. How are users to
>  distinguish between the "Back to previous menu"
> link and the "Back to
>  previous page" link?
>

Changed

> Exactly.
>
>  * Overall, it's difficult to get accustomed to the
> hierarchical nature of
>  the menu because of its unusual shape and the fact
> that the previous level
>  disappears as the next is displayed.
>

With the menu being circular, you can't leave the
previous levels
visible without making a real confusing mess on the
screen, which
doesn't help users either.

When you go to a submenu, the menu is always
centered on the mouse pointer - which for a circular
menu means
that each option is the same distance away. Yes it
does cause the
menu to 'jump' about the screen. Perhaps I've been
playing with it
for too long and am now used to that.


> But, what's the point of even doing it then? Tom has
> got an interesting idea, to relegate back to
> a hierarchical linear form makes it the same as
> everything else -- I say he continues on the line
> he is at to see if he can make it work.
>

I've changed the left click behavior, to activate the
submenus, you must now click on them to open them, I
could do a combination, where if you hover for a
second they open, but a click will do it quicker.

The back and forward links also work in IE now.

Thanks for the feedback so far

Tom


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