On 13 Jun 2007, at 17:05, 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. 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 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. /Jonas.
I've followed this thread closely as I'm always interested in GUI- related topics (more from the end-user experience point of view rather than the coding one however) and, after looking at the various screenshots, I find myself liking the original R5 method more and more. Also, I really think that having a short-cut _and_ submenu indicator in the same menu item is mutually exclusive.
I know that, unlike some other operating systems, in BeOS users can select a submenu parent as if it is an item in its own right (something that does take a bit of getting used to when you come from a Windows background and you click parent items hoping the submenu will appear faster). Nevertheless, having a keyboard shortcut for this seems unusual and would suggest the application's menu _content_ needs re-working, rather than making changes to the O/S itself.
I took a few moments to look at OS X as BeOS seems to borrow quite a bit from it. I also looked at the Amiga Workbench GUI as well as it borrowed from System 3 (and vice versa) and I found that both use the R5 format exclusively; I couldn't find a single menu item that had both a keyboard shortcut and a submenu indicator so I'm wondering if this is all a bit of a red herring?
Chris
