But what if the web convention was a band-aid solution to make up for
a lack of desktop functionality? And now that we're able to implement
desktop functionality, do we still want the band-aid solution on top
of the real solution?
To illustrate my point: Do we want the keyboard interaction in Scooby
to be:
1. Use arrow keys to move focus between Event Lozenges (visualized
via the dotted outline) and then hit Enter to actually Select the
Event; OR
2. Use arrow keys to move between Event Lozenges, thereby
Automatically Selecting the Events as you Navigate?
I'm not sure what the utility of Scenario 1 is. (Although I can
easily believe that there are scenarios that support this usage
style, if anyone can think of any.) My personal take is that it was
useful when Scenario 2 couldn't be done because you couldn't just
Select an Event, you had to hit Enter to Navigate TO the Event by
loading a fresh page. But now that we CAN do Scenario 2, I don't
think we need to have Scenario 1 as well. Let's just Select the #$@
Event Lozenge and be done with it ;o)
I think this is the same reasoning behind Yahoo's new web mail UI.
They moved to a split pane Summary/Preview pane design for reading
email, which is fundamentally different from traditional Webmail
interfaces where you can't Select an Email and Preview it, you always
have to Navigate to the Email on a New Page.
I've been looking at the AJAX calendars and they don't seem to have
support for navigating between Selections. You can however Navigate
TO other Views/Pages (a la Scenario 1) IF they are Links (e.g. Days
of the Week). But not all Navigation elements are Links (e.g. Day/
Week/Month/Next 4 Days/Agenda tabs, Minical)
I think in Scooby, we should allow users to Navigate between Days of
the Week by just Selecting the Day of the Week, rather than having to
do the whole Focus + Enter thing. This kind of Auto-Selection is
exactly the kind of interaction that makes Desktop apps feel smooth.
Mimi
On May 2, 2006, at 4:16 PM, Jeremy Epstein wrote:
Thats not 100% true -- it is possible to suppress all conventional
focus indicators-- I believe yahoo does this on their new web mail
application.
But should you?
When you get to the point you are overriding all basic
interactivity you might have a "web-delivered" desktop application,
but its no longer a web app in any sense of the word. Which is
really the heart of the discussion-- If there is a conflict in
behavior between web convention and "chandler convention" which do
you stick with? If you expect the bulk of your users to come from
chandler, and should those users find comfort in chandlers quirks
which is the bigger sin? inconsistency with chandler, or
inconsistency with web convention.
This happens all the time with desktop apps-- apple, microsoft,
macromedia, and adobe each maintained a separate and unique set of
key shortcuts. If you are writing an adobe app do you follow mac
convention? windows convention? your internal convention?
What key shortcut quits an app? ctrl-Q? ctrl-X? esc?
How does redo work? ctrl+ y? ctrl+shift+z?
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