Flyout menu questions
Sunday, October 28, 2007 by ju_star | Discussion: ObjectDock
Hello. I just installed ObjectDock Plus and I'm loving it. Some of the quirks of flyout menus have me a bit disappointed though.
First, it's very annoying that flyout menus won't seem to show all items it contains, even if there is enough space to do so. For example, I made a folder containing 4 shortcuts in it, and make a flyout menu out of that folder. When I open the flyout menu, it shows only 3 of the items, even though it is clearly possible to just show all 4 items and not show the left/right arrows.
Second (this is a subtle issue), I find it odd that, in an open flyout menu, when your mouse is not hovering over one of the items, the caption for the *middle* flyout element is always shown. This makes it weird when I glide my mouse from the middle item in the flyout menu, towards the right side items.
*
Just so I'm clear, let's say I have a flyout menu with the following items:
[Downloads] [Documents] [Music] [Pictures] [Videos].
- When my mouse is not hovering over any items, The "Music" caption always appears.
- As I move my mouse from the Pictures item to the Videos item, I see the "Pictures" caption, then the "Music" caption, and then the "Videos" caption. What I would expect is to not see the Music caption during my transition from Pictures to Videos.. why not have the "Pictures" caption fade out and then the "Videos" caption fade in?
I know this is a fairly minor detail, but I think this would be a simple change that would really improve the user experience. Just my thought anyway.
*
Third: I'm loving the feature to show open windows in my ObjectDock bar. However, I don't understand why a flyout menu isn't used when there are multiple windows of the same app. It would be uber amazing if I looked at my opened windows in ObjectDock, clicked on my the Firefox icon in which I have 3 opened instances, and it popped up a flyout menu with the 3 windows there. Instead, I'll click in it and get the horribly ugly Windows list of openned windows
. Anyway, I hope this is in your feature list for the next version of OD.
Thanks, and good work guys!
First, it's very annoying that flyout menus won't seem to show all items it contains, even if there is enough space to do so. For example, I made a folder containing 4 shortcuts in it, and make a flyout menu out of that folder. When I open the flyout menu, it shows only 3 of the items, even though it is clearly possible to just show all 4 items and not show the left/right arrows.
Second (this is a subtle issue), I find it odd that, in an open flyout menu, when your mouse is not hovering over one of the items, the caption for the *middle* flyout element is always shown. This makes it weird when I glide my mouse from the middle item in the flyout menu, towards the right side items.
*
Just so I'm clear, let's say I have a flyout menu with the following items:
[Downloads] [Documents] [Music] [Pictures] [Videos].
- When my mouse is not hovering over any items, The "Music" caption always appears.
- As I move my mouse from the Pictures item to the Videos item, I see the "Pictures" caption, then the "Music" caption, and then the "Videos" caption. What I would expect is to not see the Music caption during my transition from Pictures to Videos.. why not have the "Pictures" caption fade out and then the "Videos" caption fade in?
I know this is a fairly minor detail, but I think this would be a simple change that would really improve the user experience. Just my thought anyway.
*
Third: I'm loving the feature to show open windows in my ObjectDock bar. However, I don't understand why a flyout menu isn't used when there are multiple windows of the same app. It would be uber amazing if I looked at my opened windows in ObjectDock, clicked on my the Firefox icon in which I have 3 opened instances, and it popped up a flyout menu with the 3 windows there. Instead, I'll click in it and get the horribly ugly Windows list of openned windows
. Anyway, I hope this is in your feature list for the next version of OD.Thanks, and good work guys!
ZubaZ
Reply #2 Tuesday, November 6, 2007 8:30 AM
Reply #2 Tuesday, November 6, 2007 8:30 AM
This looks like a job for . . . the Developer!!!
I'll bet tech support swings by in a bit to pass this on.
I'll bet tech support swings by in a bit to pass this on.
Dr W - Fences Support
Reply #3 Tuesday, November 6, 2007 11:40 AM
Reply #3 Tuesday, November 6, 2007 11:40 AM
Hi,
shanghei: in the current form flyouts can only show an odd number of items. So unfortunatly, if there's an even number, you'll need to scroll to get to one. The flyouts will show either 1, 3, 5, 7 or 9 icons at max, rounding down of course.
ju_star: thank you for the suggestions! I've made note of this post for the next time we're looking to improve flyout menus, both of the posts here definitely touch on things we'd like to improve upon the next go-around.
Thanks!
DorkCoffeez
Reply #4 Tuesday, November 6, 2007 3:29 PM
Reply #4 Tuesday, November 6, 2007 3:29 PM
There should have been a *swing* in there between posts.
ju_star
Reply #5 Wednesday, November 7, 2007 12:17 AM
Reply #5 Wednesday, November 7, 2007 12:17 AM
Thanks Jeff, look forward to seeing an update, whenever that may be.
Cheers
Cheers
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Reply #1 Tuesday, November 6, 2007 4:08 AM