Re: [lmi] Group premium quotes: UI

[Vadim Zeitlin]

On Mon, 19 Oct 2015 03:00:31 +0000 Greg Chicares <address@hidden> wrote:

GC> On 2015-10-19 00:14, Greg Chicares wrote:
GC> [...]
GC> > Here's why I ask. The way I view this--and the way the toolbar actually
GC> > works--is that a generic "produce a roster" operation exists, symbolized
GC> > by 'roster*.png', which requires a choice between two roster varieties.
GC> > Thus, to me, 'roster*.png' really belongs with "Census | Print roster"
GC> 
GC> It occurs to me now that we have already achieved that with "File | New",
GC> which uses a popup menu rather than the "Census | Print roster" command's
GC> cascaded submenu. These being the only two menu commands that have
GC> subordinate menus:
GC>  - would it be better to use the same kind of subordination for both?

 In principle, consistency is always good, but in this case the behaviour
of "File|New" is so exceptional that I'm not sure it should be propagated.

GC>  - if so, which kind should we choose?

 Clearly, for the reasons given by yourself, changing the way "File|New"
works would be unacceptable, at least without _very_ good reasons, as it
would disrupt the workflow for the existing users and we can be pretty sure
that all lmi users use this. So if we do decide to use the same approach
in both cases, it should be a popup menu.

 But IMHO it would be a wrong decision just because it is unusual to the
point that I've never seen it used anywhere else, under any platform. Of
course, it is also unusual when opening a new window, but at least when
opening the first one, the main lmi window is empty and the popup menu is
very noticeable on its background and immediately attracts the users
attention, which wouldn't be the case when printing a census roster. Having
a submenu also allows to assign accelerators to its sub-items which may be
nice (or not, if they're only used very rarely, of course). A sub-menu or
also a toolbar drop down is also much more discoverable as you can easily
view the available sub-commands without starting an operation which might
be expected to have an immediate effect (example of "Print" sending the job
to the printer immediately being just near it to remind about this).

 To summarize, I'd much prefer leaving the existing sub-menu and toolbar
drop down as they are and see no really good reason to change them.

GC> BTW, provided we don't change "File | New", it seems to me that it
GC> should acquire an ellipsis.

 Yes, definitely.
VZ