"Ryan Leavengood" <leavengood@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: ... > A lot of people like to point at Mac OS X as some kind of > paragon of usability, but Apple frequently won't even follow > their own UI guidelines. I think previous to MacOS X, Apple had a lot more self-discipline. > So anyhow, to the point at hand: having an open menu that can be > activated by clicking or with a shortcut, but also contains a > recently > opened submenu that will open after a short amount of hovering over > the menu item. I don't think it is that bad. In fact, I might argue > it > is more usable that the separate Open and Open Recent menus. ... > Then what about the case where there has been quite a while > since a certain file has been opened and it has therefore scrolled > off the recent items. With the separate Open Recent menu the user > would have to move down to that menu item, open it, see that the > file is not there, then move back up to click open. With the combo > menu they can move down to Open, let the submenu open, see that > the file is not there, and then just click to get the BFilePanel. For > both > novices and advanced users that is just better. I think the combo is the same sort of "clever" construct that should be avoided in code, which, while perfectly legal, intelligible, and smart, is less immediately digestible. "Open recent" should work well enough, with less symbol congestion. ( ... [Alt] O > ) What Jon suggested recently in "One Desktop to Rule Them All" could be extended in a way that would make people less dependent on interactive use of the menus. (Read: mousing, bad.) Jon suggested adding Search in the file panels, and it would be easy to extend that with another tab for Recent (documents): http://haiku-os.org/files/NewOpenPanel.png (I've only looked at the proposal briefly yet, so I won't comment on anything beyond this.) A file panel could possibly present a very long list of recent files in a better way than a menu can, and the search function would complement the recent files list. This way there would only have to be one "Open..." item in the menu bar. A menu/shortcut repertoire which is simple and consistent between application makes it easier to learn to live without lookups in the menu. The menu bar is there more as a memory aid. This lessens the need for mousing and saves your hands. If applications, like Pe, want to provide Open from Server / Save to Server, etc, it could be done by letting apps add tabs. BTW, Pe, uses "Open Recent > ", but it has a total of 4 variations on Open. That can't be good. In my opinion we should avoid the shortcut + submenu combination, but handle it gracefully. The old or the new way, either is fine with me, if we stop doing it and the HIG discourages the use of the combination. If we are to continue doing it, I think I prefer the new way, but I'm not sure. It is a bit weird to have the shortcuts along the edge on most menus, and then have a lot of space along the edge of one menu simply because there's a combo. /Jonas.
