UI Buttons was: [squeak-dev] MessageNames: clicking on class names

Frank Shearar frank.shearar at angband.za.org
Fri Apr 2 16:36:31 UTC 2010


Chris Muller wrote:
> Oh yes, I agree about the button panes.  I keep them all turned off as
> much as possible, and would like to add a preference to disable the
> ones in the debugger altogether.
> 
> The main problem with buttons as a UI-element is that they provide
> little or no output.  Instead, they just sit there, taking up valuable
> screen space, waiting for one single type of gesture of input, a
> left-cick.  I believe this is mostly to accomodate users who do not
> have Basic Computer Literacy, the same kind of users who will not go
> very far with Squeak anyway.
> 
> Not a bargain...

What are the alternatives?

Putting actions in context menus means you replace "click" with "click, 
move, click". (Of course, actions like browse, senders-of, 
implementors-of, version, ... are already there, in the second "page" of 
the context menu.) Leaving the buttons out entirely means "How on Earth 
do I Foo?" The buttons are a very clear indication of what you can do.

frank

> On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 1:59 PM, Ken Causey <ken at kencausey.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, 2010-04-01 at 13:20 -0600, Chris Muller wrote:
>>>> I noticed that the new search morph in the docking bar will bring up class
>>>> names as well as selector names. For instance, searching for "obj" will show
>>>> things like "AbstractObjectsAsMethod".
>>>>
>>>> If you hit the browse button on these entries, though, nothing happens.
>>> This is because the preference, #alternativeBrowseIt is disabled, by
>>> default.  Crazy isn't it?  If just enable that and you can (b)rowse
>>> hierarchy's, i(m)plementors, or se(n)ders with those keys..
>>>
>>>  - Chris
>> It's not that simple.  There is another clearly related problem that
>> this does not address (oh, and your solution does not fix the problem,
>> it simply leaves out the most glaring instance of the problem).  The
>> 'instance', '?', 'class' buttons have the same problem as the alternate
>> browser buttons.  Even more fun because they are in a subpane of the
>> upper frame, try to enlarge just the source code pane by pulling the
>> main divider up...the instance/?/class button pane is squashed and once
>> it reaches it's lower limit you can't move the main divider up any
>> farther.  Instead you have to start by dragging up the divider between
>> the pane listing the classes and the button pane then drag up the
>> overall divider leaving enough space for the buttons.  Not intuitive in
>> my book.
>>
>> Ken
>>
> 
> 
> 




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