Re: onContextMenu Widget

On Thursday 11 September 2003 00:33, [email protected] wrote:
> > > I'm not convinced that a context menu would be the best approach
> > > from a useibility standpoint in this case.
> >
> > As an "advanced" user, anything that clobbers my context menu is going
> > to earn my never-ending ire. I just hate the gall of a web page that
> > assumes that it's in complete control of my experience. This might,
> > however, be more of an indication that I'm a control freak and less
> > of a strike against the proposed widget = )
>
> Well, you guys have much more experience with web applications and their
> users than me, but I am imagining that custom context menus might become
> more widespread and accepted with more and more "real" web applications
> appearing.

This discussion goes back and forth a lot, I've noticed. I'm not sure that 
either side has "won" yet.

> I am thinking of the average user for my application and am pretty sure
> that these kind of people do not at all care about the nature of their
> context menu. On the contrary, they will appreciate if they can save a few
> mouse movements and clicks. The more the application resembles their
> desktop applications, the better for them.

I just wonder if they'll ever know to look for such a context menu. It seems 
to me that this isn't a "standard" part of a web-app, and isn't immediately 
visibile, and so might just go un-used.

OTOH, there are lots of features that don't have widespread usage but get into 
GUI toolkits of every stripe because some portion of the user base can't live 
without it.

> > > I think generally that
> > > users aren't familliar with context menues in a webpage and would
> > > find a clickable table more intuitive along with a delete button of
> > > some sort.
>
> However, the "mark and press button" method is not really the same thing,
> because the special thing of the context menu is that, as the name says, it
> is contextual. So if I would like to create a button for each of the
> contextual options that might be attached to a particular element of the
> page, the page would have to be cluttered with buttons.

Agreed. Keystroke hinting is also a big win here.

> Anyways, it is not a priority since I can use a "third party add-on" ;-)
>
>
> > > Be kind of hard to represent this one as a degradeable widget :)
> >
> > That concerns me a little bit. I am, however, more concerned about the
> > usability consequences of over-riding the user's context menu.
>
> What would the "average user" need the default context menu for in a
> nw-Application?

To copy text from an email to the clipboard, for instance.

> But it is not so important after all if you don't like the idea. It was
> just a suggestion.

Don't give up on it! I'm always willing to be convinced that an idea is good 
and that it should be implemented. You just have to convince me, that's all.

Regards.

-- 
Alex Russell
[email protected]    BD10 7AFC 87F6 63F9 1691 83FA 9884 3A15 AFC9 61B7
[email protected]  F687 1964 1EF6 453E 9BD0 5148 A15D 1D43 AB92 9A46

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