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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Context menu debate
From:       jwsacksteder () ramprecision ! com
Date:       2003-08-11 14:13:10
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I'm passing this over from KFM.

I was not aware of the context menu discussion going on, so I'll jump in
with this. Basically I think that 'cut' is a kde-wide universal function
that needs to be in the context menu for completeness and usability. If the
consensus is the reduce the size of the menu, please remove the konqueror
navigational elements, but include the general kde stuff. It makes for a
jarring user interface when certain apps look or act differently than every
other kde app.

Let's think about making the menu efficient and clean, which not exactly the
same as 'short'. To paraphrase Einstein, it must be as short as possible-
and no shorter.

My comments to the original post are below...

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Leo Savernik [mailto:l.savernik@aon.at]
>Sent: Monday, August 11, 2003 9:15 AM
>To: kfm-devel@kde.org
>Subject: Re: Cut, Copy context menu in konqueror

>Am Montag, 11. August 2003 14:27 schrieb jwsacksteder@ramprecision.com:
>> If you select text in the URL area, you can cut, copy or paste from the
>> right-click context menu. If you do the same in the body of the page, you
>> can only get to those functions via the toolbar cut or the pull-down
menus.
>> This is seriously inconvenient for me personally, as I frequently cut
>> search terms and names out of pages so I can paste them into other web
>> forms. I would expect it to work that way since most kde apps have that
>> behaviour already. Is this intentional design? If not, consider this a
new
>> feature request.
>
>It's intentionally for two reasons.
>- Not bloating the context menu even more.
>- HTML is read only, there's no sense in having cut & paste there.
>
>You *could* send a proposal to kde-usability of adding Copy to the context 
>menu, but I guess it gets rejected because there's a big movement to get 
>stuff out of the context menu, not into it.
>
>Note that within form fields, you *have* a context menu containing cut,
copy & 
>paste.
>
>Btw, how about using MMB pasting? Select the piece of text and simply hit
the 
>middle mouse button over the target (e. g. form field) to paste it.
>

1. I was not aware of that, so I would argue it has poor usability. With a
context menu, I can right click and see what operations are explicitly
possible on that object. I think implicitly copying on selection is a
horrible idea. Unless I read that in a faq or someone explains that to me I
will never be aware that feature exists. 

2. I could adapt to that behavior, but it is a major inconvenience since
that is different from all the other KDE and Windows apps I use, as well as
Mozilla. This is the only UI wart in KDE that causes me serious aggravation
on a daily basis. Why be different if different isn't actually any better?
I'll use the menu 'cut' instead.

To be dogmatic, I think that at least 'copy' needs to be available by
context menu, main menu, and keyboard shortcut _everywhere_ in KDE. 'Cut'
and 'Paste' should be available wherever applicable. 

I'll carry this over to usability. 
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