[haiku-development] Re: [Haiku-commits] r21394 - in haiku/trunk: headers/os/interface src/kits/interface

I've finally caught up with the big backlog in my inbox...replying to this one as Jonas had some nice screenshots and mentions all the key points. 

Jonas Sundström wrote:
Looking at the results I think we're fooling ourselves, optimizing for the most unlikely case, so to speak: 
the -combination- of a shortcut -and- a submenu indicator.
Agreed. I'm one of the people who would prefer devs to be discouraged from having both a shortcut and a submenu (I never really got used to clicking on parents not just popping open the submenu on BeOS, despite using it basically full-time for a few years)...but as the API allows it, we should certainly support come up with some way to display those items with both. 


http://www.kirilla.com/tmp/new_menuitem_layout/

I don't think it looks good. We're forcing two separate columns in -
lots- of menus, where the simple items using either a shortcut -or- a submenu indicator would look much better aligned vertically, roughly the way they are in BeOS: 
http://www.kirilla.com/tmp/new_menuitem_layout/r5.png
http://www.kirilla.com/tmp/new_menuitem_layout/fake_similar_to_r5.png
(Not exactly pixel perfect. I used drag&drop in ShowImage.)
I absolutely agree that a single column layout looks much better. The way there is a big gap before the shortcuts but they still aren't right aligned looks strange to me. 


I suggest that this layout behavior is kept:
http://www.kirilla.com/tmp/new_menuitem_layout/keep/

And that this behavior is changed to single column:
http://www.kirilla.com/tmp/new_menuitem_layout/fix/

In short, no space* on the right hand side unless there's a
Command shortcut -combined- with a submenu indicator, in which case all submenu indicators are pushed to the 
right side border. Like this:
http://www.kirilla.com/tmp/new_menuitem_layout/keep/screen06.png
else, they are aligned, like this:
http://www.kirilla.com/tmp/new_menuitem_layout/fake_similar_to_r5.png
* The alignment is what I'm after, not necessarily the removal of space.
I'd rather shift everything to a single column(ish) approach. I still think the spacing looks weird in the shots in your "keep" folder. 

I'd rather:
http://www.simon-t.me.uk/singlecol.png
than
http://www.kirilla.com/tmp/new_menuitem_layout/keep/screen06.png
It means the "alt"s don't line up all along the menu (there would be two different alignment points, for those with and without a submenu), but still it looks better to my eyes.
If the two-column approach is to be kept then there probably needs to be a bit more padding between the shortcut column and the submenu arrow column. 

Simon


/Jonas.

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