The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience [LWN.net]

The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Posted Mar 16, 2011 16:33 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304)
In reply to: The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience by coulamac
Parent article: The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

I hate to point it out, but combining a keypress and a major mouse movement is not very pleasant from a UI perspective (let alone a discoverability perspective). The only way you could make it harder would be to require fine control at the end of the mouse movement or chords on physically distant keys. You're still requiring simultaneous use of two arms and relatively fine coordination in both of them at once.

I can say that for some years I would have been physically incapable of carrying out that action, and that's just RSI, not anything particularly serious. Even now I'd find it tricky. I am not alone. (Sticky keys might make this a bit less appalling.)

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The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Posted Mar 16, 2011 17:07 UTC (Wed) by coulamac (guest, #21690) [Link] (1 responses)

I'll try to address some of your points:

* non-discoverable: true, but this feature is certainly highlighted in the documentation. So, for those who want to read up on some short cuts in the shell, you might find some nice features. Also, feel free to look here: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/CheatSheet

* requiring two hands: not necessarily. You don't need to keep the super/meta/"windows" key pressed down when you're using the mouse. Once you've pressed the key (and then unpressed it), you're now in the Overlay mode, which is also what happens when you click the Activities button or throw the mouse pointer to the upper left corner of the screen. So, you could push the key and then move the mouse. On the other hand, it would probably be faster to push the key with your non-mouse hand and then guide the mouse pointer to left side of the screen with your mouse hand.

* fine motor control: this criticism I don't really understand. Once you've pushed the button, you just need to throw the mouse pointer to the left side of the screen and you're at the dash. This is not unlike throwing the mouse pointer to Gnome panel at the top of the screen in Gnome 2. No extra motor control should be required. If pushing the button itself requires too much fine motor control due to RSI or some other reason, then you're right: this is probably not the best way to get to the dash for you.

Again, this is one out of several ways to get to a launcher. It will not necessarily work for everyone. There will undoubetdly be more ways to access launchers through extensions in the very near future. You could also use the dock programs out there to supplement the Shell.

At any rate, I hope this clarifies things. Thanks for your feedback!

The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Posted Mar 16, 2011 17:45 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Aha! So it already acts like a 'sticky key'. Yeah, that fixes a lot of my concerns about this feature. (The non-discoverability remains concerning, but as an Emacs user I can't really make *too* much noise about that. ;} )