re: ::scr Interface Evolution

[matt jones <jonah@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Simon Wistow wrote:
> http://www.piemenu.com
>
> It's an idea from the guy who did the interface from The Sims 

Mmmmmmmm, pie menus ... the Sims.

/me drools gently

As it happens, The SIms was the firsat time I had ever come across an
actual implementatio of pie menus, although obviously I'd heard about them
when reading interfacey designy type stuff. I really rate the Sims
interface.

> I actually rememebr things sort of like this in other games (Tomb Raider
> in Lara's back back being one) and they're an interesting idea. 

Mmmmmm, uhhhh, I think, strictly speaking, that Lara's backpack wasn't a
pie menu. I mean, the whole idea of pie menus is that each choice requires
pretty much the same amount of effort to get to, and Lara's backpack
requires the user to ratchet round the circle of items by a different
amount for different choices. For example, the medkit requires one
"notch", whilst the flares require three or four (I can't quite remember,
exactly). Still, they put the most often-used item nearest, which is also
a technique that's useful for heavily-populated pie menus.


> One
> thing I can't get used to in Macs (and various Linux desktops) is the
> lack of Windows style right click context menus (they're probably there
> but I don't know where - Doze is just what I'm used to. Macs have them
> bound to the Apple key?).

It's bound to something (ctrl?) but I can't remember what (Bueller?
Bueller? Mison?) since I always use FinderPop which pops context menus up
after the mouse has been down for a user-defined amount of time. It's
suprising how little that interferes with your everyday pointing and
drooling, actually.

> Black and White uses a gesture recognition system which is interesting and
> is surprisingly effective and is a particularly good use of muscle
> memory, doesn't clutter the screen with icons and allows a large range
> of actions to be performed simply. The learning curve is steep though.

Hmmmm, I wasn't at all sure of Black and White's interface at all. I mean,
for a start, the whole hand metaphor wasn't anywhere near as intuitive as
I think they thought it was, and the trouble with the gesturing is that
just at the sort of time when you needed to use it (e.g. creature pagga),
the fucking thing takes control of your camera angle and whizzes it
around, hence buggering up any gestures you were in the middle of
making. 

I suppose the gesture idea fit well with their hand metaphor, and was
certainly quicker than doing it with all their little icons in the bottom
right of the screen, but I think the spellcasting in B&W was an example of
where a pie menu would have been an ideal choice. You make the gesture /
click the icon / whatever to call up spells, and then your choices appear
around the mouse pointer. A lot more efficient, and gives the kind of
response time you need when bombarding an temple or helping your creature
out while it's having a barney.

A much better implementation of gesturing (IMHO) is that used by
recent versions of Opera. 

Anyway, I don't know why I'm wittering about this, this is much more
Celia's house, isn't it?

-- 
mjx
"if XP is dumbed-down to unbearable depths, [RedHat] 7.2 is still bitchy,
unpredictable and high-maintenance, like some upper-middle-class
girlfriend" - Thomas C Greene, The Register