Ok, there's me and Steve Herrick, but who is the third person of this group?
On Fri, 2003-07-25 at 10:54, Steve Herrick wrote: > Gary Glasscock wrote: > > If there is a group UI Design Group formed please let me know, I would > > love to be one of the people in the group. > > > > Thanks > > > > Gary Glasscock > > Three constitutes a group in my book. If more want to join us later, > that's great. If either of you is short on time or interest, I'll > understand. > > I was reviewing my Jef Raskin recently, and I was reminded of one his > principles: A well-designed interface does not need to be divided into > "beginner" and "expert" subsystems. To me, that indicates that Scribus > should equally understandable to users of PakeMakers, InDesign, and > Quark, and people new to DTP. It should be as accessible as it is powerful. > > Being modeless should be a goal (Raskin again). It's possible this could > be disconcerting, however, as it could mean doing away with the idea of > having an active frame or a selected object. High context sensitivity > should be able to more make up for this with the convenience of acting > on an object directly with no thought for selecting it first or choosing > a tool (mode). > > Here's an example of what I mean by that. Say there's a frame with an > image in it. Clicking and dragging grab boxes crops it (for the moment). > Left-clicking a grab box presents a contextual menu with two options: > "Use to resize image" and "Use to crop image." Mousing over "Use to > resize image" activates a submenu: "...with frame aspect ratio" and > "...with original aspect ratio." Choosing one of these means you've > applied two decisions with no tool selection, no menu selection, no > object selection, no searching about for settings, a single click, and > minimal mouse movements. Click and drag the grab box to resize the > image, then click and drag the frame border to move it - no switching > tools. Almost every click and movement acts directly on the document. > > Here's another example, in text. I like how InDesign handles columns - > as an attribute of a text frame, not a page. So, left-clicking in text > could bring up a menu including a Columns option, with the following > suboptions... > Number -> One more (unavoidable pop-up asks for gutter width; column > width is 1/x of the remaining frame width) [ | One fewer (only visible > if there are multiple columns already)] > Widths -> Even | Uneven (pop-up asks for column widths) > H Balance -> Yes | No > (Things would be even more streamlined if only changes were offered: > Make widths uneven; Balance columns horizontally.) > > Left-clicking would only change text attributes (font, size, color, > linespacing, style, etc.) if the text were selected. Otherwise, the > options provided would act on the frame (columns, border, select > (paragraph | all text in frame [ | all linked text]), X flip, Y flip, > widows, orphans, etc. > > Another thought is to have mousing over make things "light up" if they > are left-clickable. This would eliminate guesswork on the user's part. > It would also all the user to click "through" layers (acting on elements > completely beneath other elements without altering the order). > > I haven't had time to apply this approach to everything in Scribus, but > if you think it makes any sense, I would try. The idea is to smooth the > learning curve - it might take you a second to figure it out, but it > immediately becomes second nature. Hopefully. I accept that it won't > always work (like with precise numbers), and I realize this is a fairly > big change, but I think it just might be better. Let me know if you > think I'm nuts. --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Mail Server Anti-Virus]
