Andrew Tween wrote:
> Hi Brad,
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Brad Fuller" <brad at bradfuller.com>
> To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list"
> <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
> Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 11:46 PM
> Subject: Re: [ANN] FreeType Plus release
>
>
>   
>> Andrew Tween wrote:
>>     
>>>>> All the menus really need re-working to provide nice scrolling lists.
>>>>>
>>>>>           
>>>> Hmm, I'd say "to not need to scroll nor page in the first place" :)
>>>>
>>>>         
>>> :)
>>> Do you have any ideas on how that could be done?
>>> If, for instance, you had 999 fonts?
>>>
>>> A fisheye, everything tiny, until you hover over it view?
>>> Or typing the font name to bring up matches?
>>>
>>> I'm curious
>>>
>>>       
>> Could use cascading menus. based on mfr, or type/kind, or even alphabetical
>>     
>
> Those are all good ideas.
>
> But, wouldn't scrolling still be needed, at some point?
> If you had 999 fonts beginning with 'A'.
> Or, 999 Sans Serif fonts.
>   

Chances are that's not going to be. But, i see your point.
> Or maybe, not that many fonts, but a small screen resolution (640x480).
>   

Yeah, if there are 999 fonts, then no matter what you do, there is
either going to be some screen real estate used up or that energy is
going to be placed into the user finagling around to browse and select.
A neat problem which I don't know how to solve.

Some alternative ideas:
* Category Based:
 - Cascading Lists: (http://designinginterfaces.com/Cascading_Lists)
 - Closable Panels (http://designinginterfaces.com/Closable_Panels)
(which is similar to the tree-table)

* Helpful navigation builtin to the selection:
 - Jump (http://designinginterfaces.com/Jump_to_Item)

*Alternative Selection:
 - Create a "My Fonts" selection that contains either the fonts the user
has selected recently, or ones that he selected manually to be in the My
Fonts set.

* Show All - I've seen menus where ALL the font names are shown. Takes
up the whole freakin' screen. Scary, but you see them all.