[760] in Athena User Interface
consensus on menus
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Abby Fox)
Wed May 9 14:36:03 2001
Message-Id: <200105091835.OAA22485@whirlwind.mit.edu>
To: aui@MIT.EDU
cc: boojum@MIT.EDU, cavan@MIT.EDU, jlittell@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 09 May 2001 14:35:54 -0400
From: Abby Fox <ajfox@MIT.EDU>
Here's a summary of decisions from yesterday's meeting with Usability.
People who were there should remind me if I've forgotten anything, and
people who weren't should feel free to ask for more context. I'll start
making these changes to the menus in the next day or two unless anyone
wants to discuss further. There are other misc fixes which I'll note on
<http://web.mit.edu/ajfox/projects/aui/menu-map.html> for anyone who
wants to follow along...and kibbitzing on any of this stuff is very much
welcome.
--Abby
attending: ajfox, amb, boojum, cavan, jlittell, sbjones
help entries
------------
For "Athena/Computer Help" we'll launch <http://web.mit.edu/olh/> rather
than <http://web.mit.edu/aui/menu/docs.html>. Susan tells us that there
may be some revamping/merging of olh and is/athena pages this summer;
beland should discuss with aurora and consulting where his page fits if
that hasn't happened already; someone should let f_l know when and if
things change and we can easily update the menus.
For "Emergency Help" we'll launch
<http://web.mit.edu/communications/directories/emergency-numbers.html>
rather than <http://web.mit.edu/aui/menu/emergency.html> and will look
at whether misc other things from beland's page (such as Personal Help
resources from the Dean's office) should have separate entries.
icons
-----
For directories, we'll stick with the folder icon. For individual
items, we'll use two generic icons, to distinguish between programs and
info:
- for programs, the default "Run..." icon from the main menu seems
reasonable (/usr/athena/share/pixmaps/gnome-run.png).
- for info, an "i" icon (/mit/graphics/images/icons/Info.xpm) seems
better than anything in /usr/athena/share/pixmaps/; ghudson is
pulling a png version of that into the release.
menu headers and tear-offs
--------------------------
amb will investigate suppressing menu headers entirely, also configuring
tear-off menus to better accomodate the name in the window title
tooltips
--------
Support status: we'll append "unsupported" to the tooltip for items
which aren't fully supported; scattered instances of "recommended" in
tooltips will be nuked as too subjective. Also, items will be
ordered so that supported stuff appears first in each submenu.
Platform limitations: we'll append a note (e.g. "SGI only") to tooltips
for programs which don't run everywhere.
longer term things
------------------
amb probably has this in his notes, but FTR, a couple of suggestions
from the usability folks:
- different background color for tooltips vs. menus
- submenus which extend to the bottom of the panel should have a visible
bottom border, so it's clear that they are not truncated
