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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: New QT tear-off menus
From:       Rob Napier <rnapier () employees ! org>
Date:       2001-03-28 16:03:55
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On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 05:15:00PM +0000, Hetz wrote:
> > I know there was some discussion about the new qt tear-off menus
> > recently. Did anything come of it? In particular, can they be turned
> > off (couldn't find an option for it)? Similarly with the tear-off
> > toolbars? I know of very few people that find them useful (I'm sure
> > some people do), and many people who accidently tear things off and
> > then have to figure out how to get things "back." Scared my wife the
> > first time she did it to the K menu; she thought she had broken
> > something and started clicking around trying to make it go away. I'm
> > sure many novice users have this experience (I know many who run into
> > this with Windows over the same thing).
> 
> Actually, the tear off menu's are kind of nice. They are on by
> default on all GTK apps.. so I suggest to leave it on.

In my support experience, tear-offs in general tend to be confusing to
users on all the platforms that they've showed up in. I get complaints
about them from Windows users who accidently pull their toolbars off
and don't know why it happened. Putting them on menus furthers the
problem.

I'm not saying that no one ever like them. I'm sure many people do.
But the people most likely to get messed up with them are the ones
least likely to know how to turn them off (which I don't believe you
can even do currently). The people who like them most are also most
likely to highly customize their environment anyway.

A different interface might be better. For instance, having a menu
local menu, so that if you right-click on the menu (or toolbar), you
get the option of tearing it off (I believe GNOME has menu local
menus). But putting it so close to somewhere that people are likely to
click (such as the "Logout" entry) make it very easy to click it by
accident and create confusion. It also makes Alt+F1, Up arrow (the way
I used to get to shutdown) very surprising.


> > Personally, I'd recommend turning them off by default. For those who
> > want them, let them turn them on. Same thing with the kicker hide
> > buttons, btw. Sitting right beside the K menu, the left one is begging
> > to get hit accidently (I did all the time until I got rid of them) and
> > create a very confused user.
> 
> Hmm, I would suggest a different approach. on the left hide button -
> don't show until until the mouse is on it for at least 2 seconds.
> same for activation.

Not a bad idea. I'd do it on both sides, though. My only concern is
that it prevents the user from "throwing" the mouse at the lower left
hand corner to get the K menu. This is similar to the wish for
throwing the mouse to the upper (right/left) corner to close maximized
apps. One solution is to provide a "hide" entry on the local menu
(obviously this would have to generate an unhide widget so you could
get the panel back).

Yes, I'm suggesting moving a lot of things over to local menus instead
of having dedicated widgets, but IMO local menus are a good place to
put things that experts want but novices don't understand. Novices are
less likely to use local menus in my experience. They often avoid the
right mouse button altogether (which is why Apple doesn't have one).

Thanks,
Rob
 
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