Re: [linux-audio-user] Opening up the discussion

On Mon, 25 Jul 2005 10:04:00 +0100
james@email-addr-hidden-dot-dat.net wrote:

> On Mon, 25 Jul, 2005 at 10:46AM +0200, Mario Lang spake thus:
>
> > That is the point, I absolutely dont feel reading up on something
> > is necessarily a bad thing. My hair stand up if I watch
> > a typical no-clue windows user more or less randomly hitting
> > buttons in the interface until "something" works. I do feel this
> > "it has to work out of the box without me having to know anything about it"
> > attitude is childish.
>
> Seconded.

Yeah, i agree, too. But fact is that maybe linux apps still have
usability issues. If an interface is self explaining so the user has to
look _less_ into the manual, this is a good thing (tm). I agree that
there are things in professional applications that need further
explanations. But in every GUI the functionality should (at least to a
degree) offer itself to the user.

I like the wings3d approach (which is not an audio app, mind you), where
the status bar is used to communicate to the user what options the user
interface offers for the object that the mouse pointer is hovering over.

This would translate very well to ardour. Mouse hovers over the plugin
boxes in mixer strips, then the status bar would say:

right-click to get context menu

When hovering over a plugin in that box it would say:

shift-LClick to remove plugin|control-Leftclick to toggle on/off|etc..

I suppose the text could be made much shorter with some convention (S-LC
for shift-left-click, etc..). Well you get the basic idea.

Or make it hierarchic:

Still hovering over the plugin in the plugin box:

"Shift...|Control...|Dbl.Click: toggle on/off|etc.."

The "Shift..." means "press shift and you will see what operations you
can reach then":

Hovering over plugin with shift held down would then show:

"L.Click: remove plugin|R.Click: some other operation"

I found this extremely useful in wings3d (though i only once took a look
at it. i don't do any 3d modeling). I suppose this approach is also
useful in all apps where the screen estate is sparse enough so that
functionality is sort of hidden behind esoteric key/mouse combos, etc..

Regards,
Flo

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