Re: [tasklist] Menu items moved

I forwarded my menu issue to the UI person who's already
created accessibility reports for the tasklist modules, and here's
his feedback.  Unless I hear anything else, I'll go for compromise
solution 1, where I add "global" actions at the end of the
context menu above the properties action.

-----Forwarded Message-----

From: cL <[email protected]>
To: Tor Norbye <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [Fwd: [tasklist] Menu items moved]
Date: 05 Mar 2003 11:59:59 +0100

replying directly to you, comments below:

Tor Norbye wrote:
> What are your thoughts on this?  Do you think users will find
> these actions in the window tab context menu?   Part of the
> reason I'm slightly worried people won't look there is that the
> window context menus typically only contain actions related to
> the window (clone, close, dock, ...) not the data contained in
> the window (the tasklist itself).

this could be a serious problem. as you point out, the context menu 
available on tabs throughout the ide focus on things you do to the tab 
-clone, save its contents (editor), or dock it somewhere else. the 
precedent is such that users will not be likely to find the global 
actions recently moved there.

if you look at the editor's context menu -big and gruesome as it is 
-you'll see a few parallels. there are actions that apply directly to 
the code the caret is located at and there are actions that apply to the
editor as a complete entity. likewise, you've got actions that apply to 
the whole task list window and actions that apply to individual tasks.

you can also look at in another way: the problem that user is trying to 
solve by expunging or editing types or filtering tasks is related 
directly to the tasks in the list -not to the container of those tasks 
-so why not provide actions that solve the problem in the place closest 
to the problem itself?

> 
> Do you think an alternative like the following will work
> better: move these actions back to the node context menu (and possibly
> leave them in the windows menu as well), but organize all of them
> at the end of the context menu (except leave properties at the end,
> by convention). That way, the context menu contains all the node
> operations, followed by the global task list related operations,
> followed by properties. This means the menu grows again - but
> discoverability should be improved.
> 
> What do you think?

this sounds reasonable to me.


cheers,
cL

-- 

ui.netbeans.org
interaction designer
[email protected]