What if it was a slow morphing animation instead of a rollover?
Imagine electronically guarded doorways in the future. You approach
the door. On the door is a design that is the insignia of the
establishment. Fu Luck Chinese restaurant, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals,
Gardner Household, whatever you imagine it to be.
When you approach the door, the insignia morphs to reveal a keypad
and a biometric "scanner" (ie. handprint reader, eye scan, voice
analyzer).
That's the analogy. Tools that reveal themselves on an as needed
basis so that they're not in your face all the time. When you're not
interacting with the tools, they are replaced with something that
guides you to the "right door", something that provides visual
feedback (as in something that interacts with your eyes, not your
mouse). For example, the isignia on the door helps you identify the
right door to approach). Once you've identified the right door and
you approach it, then the insignia space is taken over with tools you
can interact with to proceed with the next step in the workflow,
unlocking the door.)
Similarly, the sidebar collection icons play the role of the door
insignia. They help provide visual feedback, help you identify the
right collection to interact with. Once you've selected the right
collection, you approach it with your mouse, at which point, you're
presented with a widget to interact with, the checkbox.
It's not conventional, but I think with visual tweaking, we can
decrease the "mistake" factor and so long as people get the
interaction and can figure out how to overlay calendars, it's worthy
of a try if it saves us a 3rd column of icons in the sidebar.
Mimi :o)
On Oct 27, 2005, at 12:04 PM, Davor Cubranic wrote:
Philippe Bossut wrote:
For 0.6 then, we decided to reduce the amount of info and to let
go of one info, namely, the "identity" (specialized icon) for the
My Calendar and Trash collections. We also decided to simplify the
look of the normal (non checked, non hovered) icon so that the
difference between checked and not checked is clear. We'll see how
it looks in the coming days.
OK. Now, I wasn't quite clear on why hover was so important (see my
last comment in the bug, https://bugzilla.osafoundation.org/
show_bug.cgi?id=4410), so I'm reading the 0.6 sidebar spec right
now, and I see that it says that (sorry for repeating it, I just
wanted to summarize here):
1. collections can be overlaid on top of the selected collection.
The
calendar calls the overlays "activated (checked) collections".
2. collections are activated (checked) by clicking on the checkbox
3. the checkbox appears when the user mouses over the collection in
the sidebar
I think this is counter-intuitive: an affordance (a box that can be
checked) should not be hidden until the user happens to mouse over
it. To me seeing icons switch from collection icon to a checkbox in
a circle as I moved the mouse around looked too much like an
incorrect hover icon was set. I see that Mimi posted a longer
explanation in the design list, so I'll move the rest of my
comments there.
Davor
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