[9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[Peter A. Cejchan]

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hi, folks,

please, look at this:
http://www2.gli.cas.cz/home/cejchan/plan9/ubuntu_widgets.png, and share your
opinion;
the main thing is the right-hand side with the slider
and let's talk about this screen-pixels-saving idea
the window borders are thin, but still active, mainly from outside of the
window
scrollbars are thin, too, with a "pop-out" slider tool
could be improved, of course
however, not a bad idea, IMHO
I always wanted to get rid of all that pixel-consuming stuff...
another way would, perhaps, be using keyboard for vert/hor scrolling, but I
feel that there's a strong opposition to using kb for anything else than
character input...

best regards,
++pac

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Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[simon softnet]

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I don't like it, but it's just my humble opinion :)

On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 4:56 PM, Peter A. Cejchan <tyapca7@gmail.com> wrote:

> hi, folks,
>
> please, look at this:
> http://www2.gli.cas.cz/home/cejchan/plan9/ubuntu_widgets.png, and share
> your opinion;
> the main thing is the right-hand side with the slider
> and let's talk about this screen-pixels-saving idea
> the window borders are thin, but still active, mainly from outside of the
> window
> scrollbars are thin, too, with a "pop-out" slider tool
> could be improved, of course
> however, not a bad idea, IMHO
> I always wanted to get rid of all that pixel-consuming stuff...
> another way would, perhaps, be using keyboard for vert/hor scrolling, but I
> feel that there's a strong opposition to using kb for anything else than
> character input...
>
> best regards,
> ++pac
>

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Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[Peter A. Cejchan]

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please, be more verbous...
i personally like everything that saves my pixels dedicated to anotherb job,
but i may be wrong, and it is only IMHO, as usually...
i spent much time also by thinking how to get rid of acme's tag lines
(i love acme so much, indeed)
however, i was not able to conceive anything but a command frame [==window]
inside of Acme... if only were i skilled enough to write it, and test it...
i am not :-(
Thanks for your opinion, anyway,
best,

++pac


On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 5:14 PM, simon softnet <ph.softnet@gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't like it, but it's just my humble opinion :)
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 4:56 PM, Peter A. Cejchan <tyapca7@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> hi, folks,
>>
>> please, look at this:
>> http://www2.gli.cas.cz/home/cejchan/plan9/ubuntu_widgets.png, and share
>> your opinion;
>> the main thing is the right-hand side with the slider
>> and let's talk about this screen-pixels-saving idea
>> the window borders are thin, but still active, mainly from outside of the
>> window
>> scrollbars are thin, too, with a "pop-out" slider tool
>> could be improved, of course
>> however, not a bad idea, IMHO
>> I always wanted to get rid of all that pixel-consuming stuff...
>> another way would, perhaps, be using keyboard for vert/hor scrolling, but
>> I feel that there's a strong opposition to using kb for anything else than
>> character input...
>>
>> best regards,
>> ++pac
>>
>
>


-- 
=============================
Petr A. Cejchan
佩恝 坠晃
Office: cej@gli.cas.cz
Home: tyapca7@gmail.com
Web: http://home.gli.cas.cz/cej/www/<https://xmail.asuch.cas.cz/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://home.gli.cas.cz/cej/www/>
http://www.facebook.com/cejchan<https://xmail.asuch.cas.cz/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.facebook.com/cejchan>
Work: +420-233 087 237
Home/SMS: not yet (thanks God)
ICQ: 583000501
=============================

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Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[hiro]

You know page, right?
acme window borders are also not active. Instead we have that little
box at the top to change size.
I think it's ok for them to adapt plan9 ideas. But I always hated the
feel of stuff popping up somewhere at random. I'd rather buy more
pixels.

Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[hiro]

And if stuff is still active what can you use the pixels for besides
stupid wallpapers.

Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[Peter A. Cejchan]

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ah, page, yes!! if only we could have editable menus (i mean something like
an acme tagline) ... there's a strange ambiguity: acme-style, or
rio-style....

On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 5:21 PM, hiro <23hiro@googlemail.com> wrote:

> You know page, right?
> acme window borders are also not active. Instead we have that little
> box at the top to change size.
> I think it's ok for them to adapt plan9 ideas. But I always hated the
> feel of stuff popping up somewhere at random.

it is not random... it is like a different cursor appears when you place it
at the corner of the active window



> I'd rather buy more
> pixels.
>
> for my >100MB photographs (acquired via scanner, of course) i just can't
buy more pixels, at least in my lifetime :-(

thanks,
++pac

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Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[dexen deVries]

On Monday 11 of July 2011 17:35:46 Peter A. Cejchan wrote:
> > for my >100MB photographs (acquired via scanner, of course) i just can't
> buy more pixels, at least in my lifetime :-(

you can get a 9MPix LCD display (IBM T221) at reasonable price:
http://cgi.ebay.com/-/200629133201


-- 
dexen deVries

[[[↓][→]]]

For example, if the first thing in the file is:
   <?kzy irefvba="1.0" rapbqvat="ebg13"?>
an XML parser will recognize that the document is stored in the traditional ROT13 encoding.

(( Joe English, http://www.flightlab.com/~joe/sgml/faq-not.txt ))

Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[Peter A. Cejchan]

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>  http://cgi.ebay.com/-/200629133201 <http://cgi.ebay.com/-/200629133201>

you're joking, aint you??  $1,100 for this... [you obviously have no idea
about our salaries here, the former(?) East  ;-) ...]
and what about the 9-compatible video card capable of serving this....??
however, my point was another: aint you annoyed by needless things that just
consume your pixels?? can't it all be done more efficiently?? even if the
win borders were 1px wide, wont it be more elegant at least? and why should
acme's tagline (s) consume so much pixels, if they can be [possibly]
replaced by an [editable] command frame ... yes, i cant prove it, sust a
silly idea... butb still feeling a disconcert between rio and acme ui
paradigm... cant it be unified?

thanks for listening,
++pac

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Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[Jacob Todd]

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On Jul 11, 2011 12:14 PM, "Peter A. Cejchan" wrote
>however, my point was another: aint you annoyed by needless things that
just consume your pixels?? can't it all be done more efficiently?? even if
the win borders were 1px wide, wont it be more elegant at least? and why
should acme's tagline (s) consume so much pixels, if they can be [possibly]
replaced by an [editable] command frame ... yes, i cant prove it, sust a
silly idea... butb still feeling a disconcert between rio and acme ui
paradigm... cant it be unified?

No. your editor window would probably take up more room than acme's tag
lines.

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Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[Peter A. Cejchan]

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sorry, i dont understand. if i have >20 files open in acme (yes, i'm silly),
and i want to see just two of them at once, my screen is spoilt by useless
taglines, saying all the time all the same: Cut Paste Snarf Look etc....
dont you perceive it as sucking??
++pac


> > No. your editor window would probably take up more room than acme's tag
> lines.
>

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Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[ron minnich]

On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 10:21 AM, Peter A. Cejchan <tyapca7@gmail.com> wrote:
> sorry, i dont understand. if i have >20 files open in acme (yes, i'm silly),
> and i want to see just two of them at once, my screen is spoilt by useless
> taglines, saying all the time all the same: Cut Paste Snarf Look etc....
> dont you perceive it as sucking??

is the right click not good enough?

ron

Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[dexen deVries]

On Monday 11 July 2011 19:21:16 Peter A. Cejchan wrote:
> sorry, i dont understand. if i have >20 files open in acme (yes, i'm
> silly), and i want to see just two of them at once, my screen is spoilt by
> useless taglines (...)

you can hide all-but-one taglines with right- (rathre than middle-) click on
tagline's `layout box' (the square to the left)


--
dexen deVries

> (...) I never use more than 800Mb of RAM. I am running Linux,
> a browser and a terminal.
rjbond3rd in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2692529

Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[Peter A. Cejchan]

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> you can hide all-but-one taglines with right- (rathre than middle-) click
> on
> tagline's `layout box' (the square to the left)
>
>
> yes, i know, and i am aware also of the two-column method that andrey
suggested above; however, a wide screen (1980) would then be nice... for
now, i drag all but two windows to another (minimized) column to have two
files open vertically (with no other taglines)

acme is cool and i would like it (fullscreen) as a ui, were it capable to
display images within frames, ala abaco

thank you all for responses, and special thanks to andrey for pointing me at
scrdump.c,  i will explore

peter

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Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[Lyndon Nerenberg]

> sorry, i dont understand. if i have >20 files open in acme (yes, i'm silly),
> and i want to see just two of them at once, my screen is spoilt by useless
> taglines, saying all the time all the same: Cut Paste Snarf Look etc....
> dont you perceive it as sucking??

I do this all the time.  Make two columns, open one file in each, then
button-3 on each frame's layout box to make it take over the entire
vertical space.

--lyndon

Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[andrey mirtchovski]

Peter,

take a look at the scrdump.c program at
http://mirtchovski.com/p9/xscr/ -- it takes a snapshot of the screen,
resizes it and places it somewhere on that same screen. It can easily
be modified to take snapshots of windows and place them in other
windows. It's not far from being a "preview".

http://mirtchovski.com/p9/xscr/scrdump.gif

andrey

On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 11:21 AM, Peter A. Cejchan <tyapca7@gmail.com> wrote:
> sorry, i dont understand. if i have >20 files open in acme (yes, i'm silly),
> and i want to see just two of them at once, my screen is spoilt by useless
> taglines, saying all the time all the same: Cut Paste Snarf Look etc....
> dont you perceive it as sucking??
> ++pac
>
>>
>> > No. your editor window would probably take up more room than acme's tag
>> > lines.
>

Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[Sergey Kish]

Personally I find that interface awful. One third of the place
occupied by WIMP controls. Tasteless.

PS: Gestures requires no controls.

On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 5:56 PM, Peter A. Cejchan <tyapca7@gmail.com> wrote:
> hi, folks,
>
> please, look at this:
> http://www2.gli.cas.cz/home/cejchan/plan9/ubuntu_widgets.png, and share your
> opinion;
> the main thing is the right-hand side with the slider
> and let's talk about this screen-pixels-saving idea
> the window borders are thin, but still active, mainly from outside of the
> window
> scrollbars are thin, too, with a "pop-out" slider tool
> could be improved, of course
> however, not a bad idea, IMHO
> I always wanted to get rid of all that pixel-consuming stuff...
> another way would, perhaps, be using keyboard for vert/hor scrolling, but I
> feel that there's a strong opposition to using kb for anything else than
> character input...
>
> best regards,
> ++pac
>

Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[Peter A. Cejchan]

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>  occupied by WIMP controls. Tasteless.

sorry, i had just the slider idea on my mind, sending a better img:
http://www2.gli.cas.cz/home/cejchan/plan9/slider.png<http://www2.gli.cas.cz/home/cejchan/plan9/ubuntu_widgets.png>
still tasateless?

> PS: Gestures requires no controls.

i didn't get it: english is not my mothertongue :-(

regards, ++pac

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Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[Ethan Grammatikidis]

MARGINS! Why is it all the computer nerds are obsessed with eradicating margins? Do they actually never try to read anything using the software they produce? OTHER than PDFs? I use a window manager with only 1-pixel side borders, and terminals with no scrollbar at all and margins reduced to virtually nothing by the idiot developers. I can't have two terminals overlapping if the right-hand one is on top; I can't read anything in it! That's not an increase of usable screen area, it's a reduction! Books printed as cheap as possible, where every penny counts in the manufacture, have margins!

I spent a long time badly wanting more screen area and eventually achieved it, only to come all the way back down again. My peak screen sizes were first a 21" CRT at 1600x1200. That was okay, I did different things in different parts of the screen, but really mostly only used about 30% of the area for my currently active task, the rest being little more than storage of windows. I had IRC chat constantly visible, but at the time didn't chat an awful lot.

My 2nd peak involved two screens, a 1680x1050 and a 1280x1024, the latter purchased very cheaply in my quest for more area. By this time I had an extremely active online social life and was also as involved as I could be with programming and open-source projects. I made myself ill, I felt horribly drained. I got nothing done. I had to remove the 1280x1024 monitor and put up with IRC being hidden whenever I wanted to concentrate on something in the slightest. Sometimes I would focus on IRC instead, but I wouldn't keep an eye on it all the time. I lost some net-friends by not keeping an eye on IRC all the time because I missed seeing when they were on, but at least I could get something done. Also, when I did catch up with my friends on IRC I could give them more time.

Now, I've come all the way down to a tiny 1024x600 screen, and except for missing out on the full height of some art, I'm quite happy! I check on the workspace with IRC exactly as and when I have attention to spare, rather than having it hinting at me out of the corner of my eye all the time.

I'll say one thing for huge screens. They make any window management model in the world seem all right. They crappiest window management systems are fine with a huge screen. This is with screens 1600x1200 and greater, 1680x1050 won't cut it with a crappy WM. :) At 1024x600, any window I'm doing anything serious in is maximized with no visible borders. I use WindowMaker because I can easily set any window to such full-screen maximization (I don't want it for all windows), and it retains a 1-pixel area along the top with iconify and close regions. Windows I'm not using are iconified, which notifies the program not to even try to draw into the window, an excellent idea, I think. I have no task bar, if I want to switch I iconify the window I'm working on and look up the one I want in the icon stack. Sometimes alt-tab is a better option, but not often. Miscellaneous junk tends to get run in the chat space where there is spare screen space to right-click the background. Sometimes I need a floating window over a browser, and that's perfectly natural, although it does require alt-tab (actually winkey-tab on my setup). The whole setup works, is efficient despite Windowmaker bugs, is pleasant to look at, and the only things which really bother me are looking at some art and the lack of margins in terminals and Gtk+ software produced by attention deficit teenagers who haven't been around long enough to learn better, and are determined to learn the hard way.

If you really are attention deficit -- I was terribly so when I started using Linux and would forget a short command in the process of switching from one VT to another (not kidding), then invest in a 1680x1050 monitor. I see one on ebay for £55, a very small investment unless you really are living in poverty to the point of struggling to buy enough food. You will have enough space for a 1024-pixel-wide browser window for documentation or whatever and two terminals next to it with nice clear text.

You know what? I used a Zaurus for reading plain-text ebooks for a long time. It had a 4" screen, absolutely bloody minute. Despite the screen being capable of rendering a very crisp 80 columns I used a larger font for a 63-column terminal, and on top of that adjusted my parameters to fmt and fed the output through sed to give me 2 columns of left margin and 3 columns on the right, just to make it nice to read, and it was very nice. None of this "I prefer paper books" for me, I don't need it, I just need margins. Books have margins.

Returning to the topic of the thread, a scrollbar can form a margin of sorts if it's not too bold. A left-side scrollbar would cure my present trouble with overlapping terminals and indeed does so on 9terms. Regular terminals are still a bit of a problem, for which I blame the extremely dense idiots working on LXDE, and me for trying LXDE without looking into what it was made of. :)

Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[dexen deVries]

On Tuesday 12 of July 2011 14:18:06 Ethan Grammatikidis wrote:
> MARGINS! Why is it all the computer nerds are obsessed with eradicating margins? ((snip))

surely you're joking, mr. feynman? @_@
or are you actually sitting on an ivory tower made of 10MPix displays?

as long as we suffer the 1...2MPix displays, we are forced to save every and each pixel.

paper is 300DPI (practically, because that's average human vision at reasonable distance). we need 300DPI displays, of some 17...22 inch size, on every desk and in every device to be able to commit to margins 

the day i get >10MPix i'll be the first in line to follow your advice and get some margins.

on an unrelated note, it seems to me websites with large horizontal margins are synonymous with bullet-point engineering and little to no useful content.

-- 
dexen deVries

[[[↓][→]]]

For example, if the first thing in the file is:
   <?kzy irefvba="1.0" rapbqvat="ebg13"?>
an XML parser will recognize that the document is stored in the traditional ROT13 encoding.

(( Joe English, http://www.flightlab.com/~joe/sgml/faq-not.txt ))

Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[yy]

2011/7/12 dexen deVries <dexen.devries@gmail.com>:
> on an unrelated note, it seems to me websites with large horizontal margins are synonymous with bullet-point engineering and little to no useful content.
>

http://cm.bell-labs.com/plan9/


--
- yiyus || JGL .

Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[Jack Norton]

yy wrote:
> 2011/7/12 dexen deVries <dexen.devries@gmail.com>:
>> on an unrelated note, it seems to me websites with large horizontal margins are synonymous with bullet-point engineering and little to no useful content.
>>
>
> http://cm.bell-labs.com/plan9/
>
>
This made my morning, thank you.


On a related note, I was taught in my technical writing class in college
to preserve a "small sea of white space" in technical documents.  This
allowed the reader to not get lost in words.  It was aimed squarely at
the "justified" paragraph alignment as named by MS Word and how stupid
it looks.  I personally subscribe to that idea whole heartedly.  In a
sense, margins to add to such a technique.  Obviously though, it can be
over done.

-Jack

Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[Ethan Grammatikidis]

On Tue, 12 Jul 2011 14:36:16 +0200
dexen deVries <dexen.devries@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tuesday 12 of July 2011 14:18:06 Ethan Grammatikidis wrote:
> > MARGINS! Why is it all the computer nerds are obsessed with eradicating margins? ((snip))
>
> surely you're joking, mr. feynman? @_@
> or are you actually sitting on an ivory tower made of 10MPix displays?

Did you not read ANY of what I wrote?

>
> as long as we suffer the 1...2MPix displays, we are forced to save every and each pixel.
>
> paper is 300DPI (practically, because that's average human vision at reasonable distance). we need 300DPI displays, of some 17...22 inch size, on every desk and in every device to be able to commit to margins
>
> the day i get >10MPix i'll be the first in line to follow your advice and get some margins.

I _sincerely_ hope you are trolling. :D Otherwise, in all seriousness, have you no brain at all? You are seriously scaring me here.

Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[dexen deVries]

On Tuesday 12 of July 2011 15:40:19 Ethan Grammatikidis wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Jul 2011 14:36:16 +0200
> dexen deVries <dexen.devries@gmail.com> wrote:
> ((ramblings)) 
>
> I _sincerely_ hope you are trolling. :D Otherwise, in all seriousness, have you no brain at all? You are seriously scaring me here.

unfortunately all too often i'm the `noise' part of the `signal-to-noise ratio'.

blame my reading comprehension more than ill will.

-- 
dexen deVries

[[[↓][→]]]

For example, if the first thing in the file is:
   <?kzy irefvba="1.0" rapbqvat="ebg13"?>
an XML parser will recognize that the document is stored in the traditional ROT13 encoding.

(( Joe English, http://www.flightlab.com/~joe/sgml/faq-not.txt ))

Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[Ethan Grammatikidis]

On Tue, 12 Jul 2011 16:31:04 +0200
dexen deVries <dexen.devries@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tuesday 12 of July 2011 15:40:19 Ethan Grammatikidis wrote:
> > On Tue, 12 Jul 2011 14:36:16 +0200
> > dexen deVries <dexen.devries@gmail.com> wrote:
> > ((ramblings))
> >
> > I _sincerely_ hope you are trolling. :D Otherwise, in all seriousness, have you no brain at all? You are seriously scaring me here.
>
> unfortunately all too often i'm the `noise' part of the `signal-to-noise ratio'.
>
> blame my reading comprehension more than ill will.

Okay, no hard feelings. I've been the noise component often enough myself and I did write a lot in my mail.

Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[dexen deVries]

Ethan got me thinking there :-)

consider a window consisting of text area and some widgets around it.
instead of making the widgets as small as possible, render as margins when not needed.

most, or all, window's widgets would be rendered as solid background color (functionally margins) when user is reading or typing text.
when user wants to activate any widget, actual menus, scrollbars, statusbar etc. would be drawn.

if the user hovers mouse over widget area, it would be understood as intention to activate widgets, triggering their visibility.

some symmetry of the left/right and perhaps top/bottom would be called for.
one downside is that the widgets would literally `flash' in and out of user's vision, possibly irritating or tiring him.


in other words, all the widgets (menus included) of an app turned into margins when mouse's /not/ over those widgets.


-- 
dexen deVries

[[[↓][→]]]

For example, if the first thing in the file is:
   <?kzy irefvba="1.0" rapbqvat="ebg13"?>
an XML parser will recognize that the document is stored in the traditional ROT13 encoding.

(( Joe English, http://www.flightlab.com/~joe/sgml/faq-not.txt ))

Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[Peter A. Cejchan]

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>  in other words, all the widgets (menus included) of an app turned into
margins when mouse's /not/ over those widgets.


yes!! i agree 100%
last night i couldn't sleep  for a while, so i tried to imagine acme as a
whole screen ui, w/o any taglines, ctrl-boxes, and sliders... however, i ran
into problems soon... made some sketches, but ended up with acknowledging a
very clever acme design.
Nevertheless, it would be elegant if all the widgets were invisible, in the
way dexen proposed.. i hope to see it implemented soon ;-)
++pac

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Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[Bruce Ellis]

I mentioned Hiki (Human Interface Kit Interface) in Seattle. Some
others have extended draw (like fgb - anti aliasing with area coverage
- under my humble mentoring). Hiki will be ready to run when I get
back from adventure. It optionally has other convolutions - Catmull
and Sinc look much better.

Next message from India.

bruce

On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 4:02 PM, Peter A. Cejchan <tyapca7@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>  in other words, all the widgets (menus included) of an app turned into
>> margins when mouse's /not/ over those widgets.
>
>
> yes!! i agree 100%
> last night i couldn't sleep  for a while, so i tried to imagine acme as a
> whole screen ui, w/o any taglines, ctrl-boxes, and sliders... however, i ran
> into problems soon... made some sketches, but ended up with acknowledging a
> very clever acme design.
> Nevertheless, it would be elegant if all the widgets were invisible, in the
> way dexen proposed.. i hope to see it implemented soon ;-)
> ++pac
>

Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[Yaroslav]

do we really need screens? lets move everything into our imagination.
all we need is to get a draw(3) interface to it...

Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[dexen deVries]

On Thursday 14 July 2011 19:12:23 Yaroslav wrote:
> do we really need screens? lets move everything into our imagination.
> all we need is to get a draw(3) interface to it...

can't wait till the first person gets ghosthacked [1], eh?
nb., PostScript is turing-complete, if lacking a bit on the I/O side.



[1] an idea from GitS; human brains interface with computer, with all the
assorted consequences


--
dexen deVries

> (...) I never use more than 800Mb of RAM. I am running Linux,
> a browser and a terminal.
rjbond3rd in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2692529

Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[Jack Norton]

dexen deVries wrote:

> if the user hovers mouse over widget area, it would be understood as intention to activate widgets, triggering their visibility.
>
>...
> in other words, all the widgets (menus included) of an app turned into margins when mouse's /not/ over those widgets.
>
>

eeek!
Am I the only one who doesn't like this idea?  I cannot stand programs
that change their visual representation based upon where the mouse is,
or what the keyboard meta keys are up to, etc...
Microsoft Office comes to mind (and then the hover-only menus fade in
and out like it's 1999).  Stupid goddamn flash/js menus on websites that
expand when you hover over them.... then break when you move the mouse
to the menu item you'd like (rinse and repeat...).
I like acme because it doesn't change its appearance no matter where I
put my mouse, nor does it have menus that appear only when I bark at it.
  The rio menus are unfortunate, but in that context it is the best it
could be I think.  I do admit though, as was mentioned earlier, rio's
'memory' of what I last selected in its menus as the next default is
very unfortunate.  I've gotten used to that though.

The worst... and I mean worst case of hover-only features is the stupid
system tray clock in windows xp.  I never now when it will be gracious
enough to give me that little pop-up that tells me the full date/time.
Or in second place, that little pop-up in windows explorer that gives me
a (bad) summary of folder contents/size.  It's a crap shoot.  Hover-only
stuff is a disease.

-Jack

Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[Wes Kussmaul]

On Wed, 2011-07-13 at 08:43 -0500, Jack Norton wrote:
> dexen deVries wrote:
> >...
> > in other words, all the widgets (menus included) of an app turned into margins when mouse's /not/ over those widgets.
> >
>
> eeek!
> Am I the only one who doesn't like this idea?  I cannot stand programs
> that change their visual representation based upon where the mouse is,

Isn't this a perfect case for letting the user set a parameter,
depending upon his/her preference?

Wes

Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[Anthony Sorace]

On Jul 13, 2011, at 10:16, Wes Kussmaul <wes@authentrus.com> wrote:

> Isn't this a perfect case for letting the user set a parameter,
> depending upon his/her preference?

No. The choice is between two very different user interaction models. Nobody has claimed that having widgets filling what would otherwise be margins and having them *not* fade would be a good plan. It'd be like setting a parameter to determine whether your editor acted like sam or acme - just pick which to run, instead.

I'm surprised and a bit disappointed that with all the talk I've seen on this topic over the years there haven't been more actual experiments (rio -i being the most ambitious I can think of). The rio code is nice to work with - pick it apart and get hacking.

Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[Ethan Grammatikidis]

On Wed, 13 Jul 2011 10:45:38 -0400
Anthony Sorace <a@9srv.net> wrote:

> On Jul 13, 2011, at 10:16, Wes Kussmaul <wes@authentrus.com> wrote:
>
> > Isn't this a perfect case for letting the user set a parameter,
> > depending upon his/her preference?
>
> No. The choice is between two very different user interaction models. Nobody has claimed that having widgets filling what would otherwise be margins and having them *not* fade would be a good plan. It'd be like setting a parameter to determine whether your editor acted like sam or acme - just pick which to run, instead.

I commented that Plan 9 scrollbars are (more or less) light enough to be like margins themselves, so we already have that as default. If they're too contrasty, that can always be hacked (probably in libframe).

>
> I'm surprised and a bit disappointed that with all the talk I've seen on this topic over the years there haven't been more actual experiments (rio -i being the most ambitious I can think of). The rio code is nice to work with - pick it apart and get hacking.

Yeah. Experimenting has certainly been on my list for a while, but I wasn't well enough to try to understand the libframe code. I'm a lot better now, and experiemting with libframe and rio is closer to the top of my list than ever.

Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[Ethan Grammatikidis]

On Wed, 13 Jul 2011 08:43:51 -0500
Jack Norton <jack@0x6a.com> wrote:

> dexen deVries wrote:
>
> > if the user hovers mouse over widget area, it would be understood as intention to activate widgets, triggering their visibility.
> >
> >...
> > in other words, all the widgets (menus included) of an app turned into margins when mouse's /not/ over those widgets.
> >
> >
>
> eeek!
> Am I the only one who doesn't like this idea?  I cannot stand programs
> that change their visual representation based upon where the mouse is,
> or what the keyboard meta keys are up to, etc...

You're definitely not the only one.

> The worst... and I mean worst case of hover-only features is the stupid
> system tray clock in windows xp.  I never now when it will be gracious
> enough to give me that little pop-up that tells me the full date/time.
> Or in second place, that little pop-up in windows explorer that gives me
> a (bad) summary of folder contents/size.  It's a crap shoot.  Hover-only
> stuff is a disease.

I almost said hover-only stuff can be done right, but remembered I've only been relying on it since using trackpads & touchpoints - devices almost incapable of mouse creep, and it's still a little bit of a nuisance.

Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[Wes Kussmaul]

On Fri, 2011-07-15 at 21:34 +0100, Ethan Grammatikidis wrote:

>  > > if the user hovers mouse over widget area, it would be understood as intention to activate widgets,
> >
> > eeek! > Am I the only one who doesn't like this idea?
> You're definitely not the only one.

OK, devil's advocacy here.

Liberal use of hyperlinks causes tednelsonitis, where the author assumes
you want to spend all day researching in depth while in fact you just
want to get the idea and move on.

A little explanatory text that pops up in a mouseover on a bit of jargon
can be very helpful. You stay on the page while getting the brief bit of
background needed.

The practice has gotten a bad rap through abuse by advertisers, but if
you look past that I think it's useful.

wk

Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[Akshat Kumar]

This goes in with all those Ayn Rand novels I never read.
All of them.


ak

On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 5:18 AM, Ethan Grammatikidis
<eekee57@fastmail.fm> wrote:
<rabble rabble>

Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[Peter A. Cejchan]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 506 bytes --]

> MARGINS! Why is it all the computer nerds are obsessed with eradicating
margins? Do they actually never try to read anything using

 i'm not a comp nerd, rathe a biologist, however, and therefore, i like
simple, yet working designs.... how do you use margins?

 >  The whole setup ... is pleasant to look at,...

:-)))

 > Books have margins.
... because they're being printed on paper ;-)   OK, but they have a plain,
background-colored, non-functional margins ...
IMHO, as always,
++pac

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Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[Bruce Ellis]

Hey, if you want margins you need them. Ever done a patent
application? Humans who call me a nerd are subject to ritualistic
humiliation.

brucee

On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 4:15 PM, Peter A. Cejchan <tyapca7@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> MARGINS! Why is it all the computer nerds are obsessed with eradicating
>> margins? Do they actually never try to read anything using
>  i'm not a comp nerd, rathe a biologist, however, and therefore, i like
> simple, yet working designs.... how do you use margins?
>
>  >  The whole setup ... is pleasant to look at,...
>
> :-)))
>
>  > Books have margins.
> ... because they're being printed on paper ;-)   OK, but they have a plain,
> background-colored, non-functional margins ...
> IMHO, as always,
> ++pac
>
>
>
>

Re: [9fans] interesting(?) widgets idea

[Ethan Grammatikidis]

On Wed, 13 Jul 2011 08:15:27 +0200
"Peter A. Cejchan" <tyapca7@gmail.com> wrote:

> > MARGINS! Why is it all the computer nerds are obsessed with eradicating
> margins? Do they actually never try to read anything using
>
>  i'm not a comp nerd, rathe a biologist, however, and therefore, i like
> simple, yet working designs.... how do you use margins?

Just to stop my eyesight being bothered by the edge of the screen. The edges of all my current screens are black, and the text-area bg usually white, so there's a lot of contrast there.

>
>  >  The whole setup ... is pleasant to look at,...
>
> :-)))
>
>  > Books have margins.
> ... because they're being printed on paper ;-)   OK, but they have a plain,
> background-colored, non-functional margins ...

I consider them passively functional. :)

> IMHO, as always,
> ++pac