Hi Stephen, hi all --

Yes, it makes sense to think about a person's first contact with Squeak and also novice users in general.

However, it is not that easy to just distinguish between "two modes" or "two kinds of users:" novices and experts. No, not all experts remember all the keyboard shortcuts all the time. They also use menus from time to time. Just think of a demo where people are watching your actions and where you want to actually show what you are doing.

Then there is the discussion about mouse-driven and keyboard-driven interaction, complementary to any experience-based dimension. Yes, menus can be filtered using the keyboard. No, we do not want to force users to switch from a mouse-oriented action to the keyboard (or vice versa). Consequently, we must also think about how challenging we make an interaction with mouse-only when changing menu structure (and others).

That said, putting really important items from top-level into sub-menus, is a bad idea. It makes mouse-driven navigation really cumbersome. Even now, that extra "menu mode" via shift-click (aka. "more...") can be hard to discover.

Thanks for this proposal. It serves as a good artifact for a discussion about usability. It is way better than just having an idea and never trying to implement it. This is really helpful!

Yet, -1, as I think that we can find a better solution for making the system more user-friendly and explorable.

Best,
Marcel


________________________________
Von: Squeak-dev <squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org> im Auftrag von Stephen Travis Pope <stephen at heaveneverywhere.com>
Gesendet: Dienstag, 24. Januar 2023 21:28:25
An: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
Betreff: [squeak-dev] Text editor menu simplified


Hello Squeakers,

At part 3 of my system simplification, here’s a version of the text editor (StringHolder) editing menu with fewer than 27 top-level items.
Here are before and after shots:

Before

[cid:abb8939b-8847-4443-b8e6-4c505f2edda4 at hpi.uni-potsdam.de]

After

[cid:82dfc022-6ff4-4444-95e6-5d5f274008ae at hpi.uni-potsdam.de]


The code is,




The items from the old “more…” menu are in the “browse” and “other” sub-menus.

All of the usual keyboard accelerators and menu search keys work as before.

stp

--------

Stephen Travis Pope    Ojai, California, USA


     http://HeavenEverywhere.com
     http://FASTLabInc.com
     https://vimeo.com/user19434036/videos
     http://heaveneverywhere.com/Reflections



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