On Thu, 2004-06-10 at 13:03, Thorsten Wilms wrote: > Hello again! > > The discussion about linear or radial mouse movement for > knobs finaly got me to mockup an idea i had in my mind > for sometime already. > > For now I call it fan sliders: > http://wrstud.urz.uni-wuppertal.de/~ka0394/forum/04-06-10_fan_slider_01.png > > It's all about concept, not style. > > The idea is to allow rather small sliders, but on mouse-down lines from > top and button appear on one side (important for making the feature > discoverable). Outside of the inital slider the pointer position is indicated > by the crossing middle and vertical line. The straight horizontal extension > is only meant to make reading easier. So up/down is value change, outwards > increases precision (can of course be turned for stuff like pan). > > If the graphics do not fit on the screen, it still can work because the > value is indicated by the initial slider and inclination of the center line > (well, at least I hope so). > > Default expansion direction should be reading direction, but moving the > pointer out on the other side could make it turn over. Close to the right > screen edge the behaviour could be as known from menus. > > The first mockup has a slider where the dragable part is clearly defined. > The second gives a stronger sense of value, but is not clear about where > to click (I propose everywhere on the slider area, always grabbing the > actual value. No special behaviour like known from scrollbars). > It's also more space efficient, because the whole are can be used (with > the other one a half button must be spared on both ends each.) > > For those concerned about precision of pointer movement / inadvertently > changes to precision while adjusting value: > Instead of linear spreading out, it could be stepped (lines looking like > stairs). But that would be much less elegant. > > > Comments, please! > > --- > Thorsten Wilms
I think that's a really good idea.. the 'base' slider could be really small (ie the size of a knob), but the movement would be linear, and with variable precision.. and it seems like it would be immediately obvious how to use the thing. It'd be a pain to implement though. Can Gtk/Qt even do stuff like this? -DR-
