Brad Fuller wrote:
> 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.
>   
Oh.. forgot to add the obvious: change page dn/up to arrows above and
below the menu. Hover over either and it automatically scrolls in that
direction. That would at least make it easier for people to browse. The
problem, I think, is it takes a while to render the next "set" of font
names. Right? Seems so on my system (which is slow with a lot of fonts.)
So, you could have the rendered list before the request.