All valid points against the tooltip approach. Maybe we could put all
this valuable file-related info in the sidebar, when the "Information"
option is displayed? Right now I find that feature of the sidebar less
than informative, and this seems like a natural kind of thing to display.
Kirk
Calum Benson wrote:
On 4 Jun 2008, at 01:52, Long Gao wrote:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=147642 is discussing how
to patch nautilus with tooltips. One of the patches provided an
experimental image preview, a little like what you mockuped. More
tests, suggestions and interests is welcomed.
Personally, I'd really prefer this wasn't done using tooltips. The
clue's in the name-- files aren't "tools" :)
One of my concerns is that in the file manager, you have a lot of
'hotspots' in a comparatively small area, and these tooltips will be
fairly large to accommodate thumbnails etc. Thus there's a higher
risk of accidental activation than on toolbars (e.g. people often
subsconsciously point at items they're looking at on the screen, even
though they don't wish to interact), and the consequences are
greater-- once shown, a significant part of the window is obscured
until the tooltip disappears again.
Also, once a tooltip appears, moving the pointer to another hotspot
causes that object's tooltip to appear immediately-- there is no delay
on subsequent activations. So the user will have to try and find a
'dead spot' in amongst all those file icons to make the tooltip
disappear again. (Or wait for the tooltip to time out and disappear,
but I'm not sure that GNOME tooltips even do that.)
Also, while tooltips are somewhat accessible via a keyboard shortcut
that turns 'tooltip mode' on and off, this is a rather different use
case that wasn't originally envisioned, and might require a rethink of
tooltip accessibility.
Cheeri,
Calum.
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