25 Jun
2004
25 Jun
'04
3:33 p.m.
On Fri, 25 Jun 2004 18:54:20 +0200, Thorsten Wilms wrote
It's not just the individual widgets that are important but the whole design.
I always post this, but:
http://girl.yowstar.com/app.gif
and of course:
http://www.ableton.com/pages/products/live/live4tour/featurelist/Session-fu…
are often cited from users as "ground breaking" interfaces (others hate them :]
)
I agree that all these designs simply rehash the old themes of interfaces - I
think we should explore this more as free software types, as we can take risks
with this sort of thing (but rarely do).
cheers,
dave
On Fri, Jun 25, 2004 at 05:22:55PM +0100, Dave
Griffiths wrote:
You would be able to get a feel for it by the change in the motion of the
slider control - I think it would become quite apparent once you knew it was
there. I quite like hiding this sort of functionality in user interfaces for
users to discover :)
I like your fan idea Thorsten, but I also think it could work invisibly - ie
no need for the transparent overlay. This would take a bit of learning that it
was there to begin with - but transparent graphics like that are expensive
(yeah, GPU's I know - but its something to keep in mind) and unnecessary after
learing how to use the control.
Requiring the user to read documentation to learn about
functionality he would not even expect is not an option.
The graphics are not only for giving a hint at this functionality,
but also for making clear what is happening. With only the initial
(small) slider the user would not have the same feel for the way
to value change mapping. The fan and indication line make clear
how the mechanism works and help the user to build an exact
mental model. The partial transparency is meant for allowing to see
other sliders
(or controls) in the background for comparison. But it's less important.
From (very subjective) experience I find any kind of
popping up of elements
annoying - but agree that it's sometimes required. I
think it needs to be tried.
It would be
good to collect a repository of existing GUI elements in
commercial packages - dunno what the legal implications would be, but it would
be useful.
Are there so many special widgets out there? I would like to hear
about any example someone around here might know. 
