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FARR version 2 - discuss the best way to handle 'actions'

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Amadawn:
here's another theoretical, consistent solution that would have the benefit of clarity and ease of use.

what if you ALWAYS got a second prompt.

so you type "et." and up come the results as nontroppo shows.
you hit enter or alt+1 or whatever you currently use in FARR to "launch" the app, but
in this new approach,
that doesnt trigger immedate launching.
instead it progresses you to stage 2, action selection mode,
where the textbox is cleared and you see the prompt
"With Ethereal.link do:"
-mouser (February 02, 2006, 01:13 PM)
--- End quote ---
If I am not mistaken this is almost what QuickSilver does. Once you select a document and hit Tab, it shows the list of actions below the document name. If that action requires a second document you can hit tab and the process continues until the whole command is reado to be executed (when ENTER is pressed).

I think Colibry does a similar think. Mouser, have you tried it? If you do, type "Col" -> this will show "Colibry", hit Tab then type "Set" -> this shows the Setup options, etc.

I think this could work really well.

I also liked the mockup by nontroppo, but I still prefer to "clear" the non selected elements on the list and just show the actions or options that you can perform.

nontroppo:
Mouser, I see two seperate issues here:

1) A flexible typed command structure to allow one to flexibly type what one wants. This doesn't depend on the UI much. Your Reply #7 clearly extends this (as you say from the current alias groups) into something much more flexible and powerful.

2) How to allow the UI to guide the user. In this case, we need to allow a user to type their first term in as we currently do. Then we need to activate an action mechanism, and select either physically or through dynamic search. Quicksilver does allow dynamic search of actions and it is useful. In this case, making the edit box then receptive to dynamic search of actions is equivalent. I liked you "With Ethereal.link do:" suggestion to guide the user (using the same text entry field). But I think an additional panel of actions (as in my mockup, and as Quicksilver does) is less confusing than replacing the item list with actions list in the results window.

In theory, users can use either method. I believe (2)  is better for novices and general users, and (1) is better for power users (we know how most people are a bit scared of aliases already!). I think both are  compatible.

nontroppo:
If I am not mistaken this is almost what QuickSilver does. Once you select a document and hit Tab, it shows the list of actions below the document name. If that action requires a second document you can hit tab and the process continues until the whole command is reado to be executed (when ENTER is pressed).-Amadawn (February 02, 2006, 04:44 PM)
--- End quote ---

Yes it does IIRC too.

I also liked the mockup by nontroppo, but I still prefer to "clear" the non selected elements on the list and just show the actions or options that you can perform. -Amadawn (February 02, 2006, 04:44 PM)
--- End quote ---

Yes, I agree that this is visually much cleaner, presenting the user with less visual "noise"

mouser:
But I think an additional panel of actions (as in my mockup, and as Quicksilver does) is less confusing than replacing the item list with actions list in the results window. In theory, users can use either method. I believe (2)  is better for novices and general users, and (1) is better for power users (we know how most people are a bit scared of aliases already!). I think both are  compatible.
--- End quote ---

yes i think i tend to agree.. still trying to figure out the cleanest way to handle this case, without going crazy and implementing 10 different modes for doing each thing..

Amadawn:
One cool thing that QuickSilver does (as you can see in http://docs.blacktree.com/quicksilver/what_is_quicksilver) is that it "stacks" every selection that the user does, from left to right, which shows very clearly what the user is doing and what the outcome of the action will be.

For instance, if you look at this:

you can see how the user selected a zip file, then selected the action "Move To..." and then it selected the folder called "Archive". After pressing ENTER the zip file will be moved to the "Archive" folder. All of this without using the mouse at all. I don't think that it can get more intuitive than that! :D

This interface is extremely cool because it shows VERY clearly the current selections and actions (as they are shown with bigger icons). The results of the search will be shown below, smaller, and only when the user selects something it gets added to the action "stack". This is shown in this other picture:



Mouser, you may want to have a look at http://docs.blacktree.com/quicksilver/quickstart_guide which explains the general principle of actions in QuickSilver and also at http://www.theappleblog.com/2005/02/18/quicksilver-changes-everything/ which has several pictures and a good explanation as well.

I already said that I don't think that Mercury Runner ( :D ) should become QuickSilver for windows, but there are many good ideas to take from how QuickSilver does things (and it looks very good too!  :-[).

As Mouser said, this is a difficult but interesting interface puzzle. But I think that QuickSilver found a pretty good solution for the puzzle. What Mercury Runner can do is add its own things, like aliases, super-configurable search procedure and expand that basic interface concept.

Cheers!

Amadawn

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