Oh, jeez. I didn't realize that there were multi-level dropdowns in your
example. Guess I only rolled over the top and thought, "yeah, that's cool".
But that simply won't do. Thanks to recent irreversible decisions, multi-level
dropdowns get people hit in the head, and we don't want that.
I propose the following:
Notebook starts out with three (single level) menu doohickeys in the upper
right. The interrupt and restart buttons get moved outside of this somehow. I
don't like those being more than a simple click. They can have little
graphical buttons no smaller than 16x16 pixels. (For reference, the execute
buton is 10x10 and too small for a sensitive input device -- the icon next to
the url is 16x16, and I find that to be clickable)
But where do we put the documentation, you ask? Well, we sure as hell aren't
going to put it in a multi-level dropdown. So. We've recently made the
left-hand pane vanishable. Now, it gets three modes: worksheet, documentation,
and gone. The documentation will work similar to a dropdown menu, but will
come in a more stable "explorer" flavor. Click something, and it expands the
menu down. Everything south of what you clicked gets pushed down.
Next week, I'll put a solid day of work into the Notebook. You'll see these
changes, and a handful of bugfixes by SAGE 2.5. Complain about the above
design before Monday if you want your voice to be heard. As of whenever I
start working, I'll run a public notebook highlighting my work in progress, and
I'll post here once that happens. That's a good time for input, too.
Thanks,
--tom
On Fri, 16 Mar 2007, Timothy Clemans wrote:
>
> Then can there please be a mode I can go into merge the second menu
> with the first? Remember everyone that menu is pure css and there are
> accesskeys that can added for each item.
>
> On 3/16/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>> Quote me on this: The SAGE notebook will NEVER have multi-level dropdowns.
>>
>> If I ever suggest it, remind me of this. If I persist, throw something at
>> my head.
>>
>> On Fri, 16 Mar 2007, Nils Bruin wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> If lots of options get added then menus are unavoidable, but currently
>>> I don't think the options presented in the notebook take up real
>>> estate that would otherwise get good use. Avoiding drop-down menus has
>>> the advantage that all options are immediately visible. Having to
>>> first drop down the menu does add another layer of indirection.
>>>
>>> For the help: From experience (my university uses them quite a bit), I
>>> find that multi-level CSS drop down menus are a rather mixed blessing.
>>> The problem: Path of the pointing device becomes important in addition
>>> to the position of the click. Try navigating one a few levels deep
>>> using an oversensitive trackpad on a laptop. Does anybody know how
>>> accessibility tools can make sense of drop down menus?
>>>
>>> I think good search access would provide a much better interface to
>>> the help than a drop-down hierarchical contents list. Even just a
>>> search tool that produces a page with the lines from the index that
>>> match a given substring would be very useful. I find I never access
>>> computer algebra system help via contents lists, but always via search
>>> or index.
>>>
>>> In all, I think I'd side with Tish on this one.
>>>
>>>
>>> >
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>
>
> >
>
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