However, I don't see what this is supposed to be good for yet. I'm
a bit concerned that this will only take much time to implement
without having any major positive effect on usability. Let's assume
an average user is given the possibility to have both horizontal
and vertical menus. Would he use it? Or would he rather choose one
and stick to it all the time then? I believe that choosing between
the horizontal and the vertical menu style would be done just once,
when he starts Etoile for the first time. So does this justify
placing the menu in the prominent edge-place?
One of the things that was discussed between Yen-Ju, David and myself
was the issue on OS X where the menus or menu icons get lost due to
lack of space. This happens quite often in my case with Flash, even
on a 15" screen. I think this was partially in response to that,
partially as a solution for wanting to support vertical menus, and
partially as a way to work around some of the issues that we're
having with supporting a horizontal menu within GNUstep.
However, after doing some more talking, Yen-Ju and I both agreed that
it's better to have a single solution that works well, that
developers can rely on, and that we can spend our efforts on making
work well. Seeing as how we already have a horizontal menu, and that
it's been shown as a part of Etoile since the beginning, and that it
will likely be useful in getting new OS X developers interested in
us, we thought it best to stick with that. Hopefully this will stop
the "let the users configure their menu" discussion, as I think most
of us really just want to have one solution for this sort of
fundamental component. Yen-Ju stated that there will most certainly
be issues in getting the horizontal menu working properly... as this
is a big part of our desktop, perhaps someone else wants to jump in
and help Yen-Ju with getting that working well, so that he doesn't
have to take all the burden for that. Yen-Ju, feel free to let me
know if I've spoken out of turn about anything here.
<snip>
I don't want to destroy your ideas here, I just try to find out the
right direction for the idea with you before it's implemented. It's
always easier to adjust one's goals when there's no code yet. :-)
You're right -- and I think we're early enough in figuring some of
this out that it's okay to have these basic discussions. There is
still a lot of uncertainty in what we're actually building. Because
of that, David asked me to start working on a Flash mockup that will
allow us to actually work through some of the interactions and
usability issues. I've got some solid stuff working already, but I'd
rather not show it off until I have more of a complete desktop model.
I expect to present it during the next phone call, so, if possible,
let's hold some of the usability decisions until we've gotten the
mockup to a point where we all agree on it. That may mean we go a few
more months without any real in-code progress on UI advancements. But
what are a few slow months if we end up with a single shared vision
at the end of it?
J.
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