[haiku] Re: Suggestions to change double click on window title behaviour
- From: Dave Osbourne <super_dooper_dave_osbourne@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 1 Nov 2009 08:57:18 -0800 (PST)
I think that double click hide is fine, just turn it off by default like OS
Xdoes and let the user turn it on when they know what they are doingby
exploring the preferences for Tracker. Its been handled in another OSquite
nicely, and I think it makes the most sense for newbie.
--- On Sun, 11/1/09, Johan Aires Rastén <johan@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
From: Johan Aires Rastén <johan@xxxxxxxx>
Subject: [haiku] Re: Suggestions to change double click on window title
behaviour
To: haiku@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sunday, November 1, 2009, 8:06 AM
Ari, Maxime and Truls:
If you think double click on title to minimize/hide is good, please add some
reasons why you think it is. If you don't, you're only expressing your personal
taste and not arguing your point.
I tried to argue that it could be confusing to newbies (or those people who
need to use computers but never seem to grasp even the "easiest" things), that
it crammed too many features into a single widget and later I added that it
might be inconsistent with what happens when you double click other things. A
good start for a counter argument might be to try to invalidate those claims,
or tell why you think it's not relevant. For example if you consider Haiku's
target market to be exclusively people with plenty of computer experience, that
would pretty much blow my arguments about user friendliness out the window.
Otherwise you might have to elaborate why you think this is easy to use and
understand for everybody.
@Ari
Nobody's talking about double click close :) That would be even worse of
course. On a side note, when I began at university, you could kill applications
by middle mouse clicking their title. Sure it was very useful once you adapted
to it, but it was still a bad design :)
@Maxime:
You appear to consider a narrow tab very important. Why do you think those 5mm
you gain more important than improved usability? Or is it that you don't think
it would make the UI more usable (for the Haiku target group, not just
yourself)? What about people with smaller screen or those who need to use lower
resolution because of reduced eye-sight (scalable GUIs would be a better
solution, but until we have that..)?
@Truls:
Not everybody has a need or desire to optimize their computing. That kind of
reasoning, if taken to the extreme, could lead to all other GUI components
being removed - because there are keyboard shortcuts and once you know them the
GUI is just a waste of space :) Do you happen to be a big fan of Emacs? ;) I've
met plenty of people who do always go to Edit menu and select Copy, rather than
learning Ctrl-c. I don't know exactly why but I guess it's that they don't
think it's worth the bother. Are these people included in what you perceive as
Haiku's target audience?
The UI becoming cleaner with only one button on each side is a valid argument,
but I think hiding windows is important enough to justify one more button (see
reasoning below). I don't think accidentally clicking the wrong button is any
easier than accidentally double clicking the title.
And I strongly disagree with adding a window context menu to the middle mouse
button for these reasons:
- One of my earlier points was the title already has too many overloaded
(hidden) functions.
- Most PCs might have 3-button mice but what about laptops, computers with
touch screens, Macs or people who use pen+tablet?
- Context are opened with the right mouse button everywhere else.
The posters above made me think about one thing though.. Hiding windows is used
for two slightly different purposes.
A) To avoid filling the screen with windows. Hiding is more of a workaround
than a solution to this. If we get better tools for using workspaces this
problem might be eliminated, thus reducing the need for a hide/minimize button.
B) To hide windows that are only occasionally required, for example a music
player or an IM conversation. Maybe this be solved in some better way too? To
me it's essential to be able to hide these kind of background services. One
possible idea would be to stick the music player on a separate workspace and
close the IM windows instead of hiding.
And this led me to some other thoughts.. No complete ideas, just brainstorming
with you :)
From a pure user point of view, is there really such a big difference between a
hidden application and a non-running application? Would it be possible to
eliminate this difference, and could it benefit the users? If you look at
opening a document in an editor, then closing and hiding would be identical if
the system instantly saved all changes and the undo history. Modern web
browsers are capable of saving open pages on exit thus making close and hide
virtually the same. Of course starting an application and restoring for example
web pages takes more time than unhiding while the latter uses more memory.
However, I feel that this is because of limitations in software and hardware
rather than in concept. Would a system that instantly restores any application
be considered "ideal", and how close to this could we get in reality?
//Johan
On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 11:15 AM, Truls Becken <truls.becken@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Ari Haviv wrote:
> I don't think double-click to minimize is 'bad' design...though double click
> to close sounds like a bad idea.
Agreed.
> but I think there should be a minimize button so that users wouldn't need to
> read a manual just to use Haiku.
First, it's not like you can't use the OS just because you can't
minimize windows. Second, how long does take until you discover what
double-click does? Two days? After that, a minimize button would just
take up space for no reason and make it easier to hit the wrong button
- having a single button on each side of the tab avoids this. I think
the design is more efficient the way it is.
> And there should also be a context menu on the tab which would include min,
> max, close, send to back etc. The user would then be able to discover all
> the UI functions and also their keyboard shortcuts.
A context menu opened by middle-clicking would be good for
discoverability. It should include a "Send To" or "Move To" submenu
for moving the window to another workspace.
-Truls
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