On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 8:50 PM, Gary C Martin <g...@garycmartin.com> wrote: > On 13 Dec 2008, at 01:53, Edward Cherlin wrote: > >> On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 8:25 PM, Gary C Martin <g...@garycmartin.com> >> wrote: >>> >>> On 11 Dec 2008, at 00:24, Edward Cherlin wrote: >>> >>>> On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 2:51 PM, Reinier Heeres <rein...@heeres.eu> >>>> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> Hi, >>>>> >>>>> I agree that the plotting functionality is not really well exposed, >>>>> although help(index) will show you it's available and help(plot) will >>>>> tell you how to use it. Try plot(sin(x),x=0..360) for example. I'll >>>>> work >>>>> on the exposure of plotting in the next release; suggestions on how to >>>>> do this exactly would be welcome. >>>> >>>> Just exposing help would go a long way to solving the problem. >>> >>> Help is already exposed in the hover menu for each toolbar icon. Not >>> discoverable enough?
OK, to be brutally explicit, I want a help icon on the toolbar, with a menu of what you can get help on. >> Absolutely not enough. I have to wait for the menu to expand _twice_. >> How was I supposed to discover that? > > You could always read the Calculate wiki page, that's where I first read > about the plot feature ~11 months or so ago. Don't tell me what _I_ can do. Tell me what a non-English-speaking child in outback Cambodia without an Internet connection is supposed to do. > In the perfect world, every > feature you needed at any moment would be clearly represented in the UI. > Different individuals use software in different ways, it's always very hard > to get this right (and it's _never_ perfect). Imperfect I can deal with. Not there is beyond me. >>> Seems Reinier' s Calculate has much more effort/detail >>> put in than any other activity so far. >> >> That doesn't mean that he got it right. I really, really hate delayed >> hover menus, and I hate doubly-delayed hover menus many times more. > > Being cheeky here... so right click and move on with life :-p No, I hadn't discovered that, either. :-D > (and, as a Mac > user, you have no idea how much it pained me when I first saw the project > was going for 2 mouse button use). I have taught preschool children click-and-drag and right click. I don't like them. I prefer one button, and click to grab, click to drop. At some age, two buttons and a set of game controls, or a programmer's third button, become practical. The question is the ratio between effort of learning and effort saved working. > Sometimes I like the whole concept of hover menus, sometimes I think they > sucks. The idea is certainly going to have to be reworked (along with a > large chunk of the existing UI) if we get Sugar to a gen 2 touch interface. Has anybody here seen Hiroshi Ishii's Minority-Report-style UI? He showed at at the Engelbart-fest, Program for the Future. >> First, because they are inherently not discoverable, and secondly, >> because you are wasting my time, and every other user's time. I reject >> the argument that we are trying to teach children to click icons >> directly, and note that it doesn't even apply in the case of help. > > For me, I always consider the need for help text (and manuals) to be a level > of failure in design. Help texts are a large burden on everyone (quality, > translation, UI space, updates, accuracy), but often are the cheapest first > pass when you realise some feature not discoverable enough. > > Any concrete UI suggestions for calculate features (or activities** in > general) to be more discoverable for you? Answer given above. _Every_ option should be discoverable visually. Forget hover. If a command must take an option, put the options on the menu for the item and just let me click it. > You're not allowed to add this as > another potential FLOSS book TODO ;-) Well OK, I guess that might be a > workaround if there's no better UI effort (and teachers like static books, > right?). No!!! No FLOSS Manuals for what should be obvious. Make it sufficiently obvious, or add a tutorial, if you are going to do non-standard things with mice and menus. No, scratch that. Just make it obvious. I am about to start writing digital textbooks. I need the tools to stay out of the way so I can teach _ideas_. > ** my latest casual discovery was that Write has customised its keep toolbar > icon, so if you hover you can choose to keep a copy as RTF, HTML, or plain > text. Well hidden, but this could be extended to 'keep' to all kind's of > interesting places (i.e. push to a Moodle server, an outbound email, web > site upload). Hopefully some Journal 'sharing' feature will be a generic > solution for any activity. > > --Gary > >> My general principle of UI design is, never, ever try to be smarter >> than your user. Not even if you are. Now that I know that help is on >> the menus on double delay, I will almost never use it that way, >> because typing is faster, but I will resent it every time I have to >> type it, because the menu could be faster. >>> >>> --Gary -- Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name And Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep