Comments for two rivers flowing

Comment on Context Menu design by Hagan

Hagan — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 11:55:27 +0000

José, it’s hard to answer your question without seeing the application, but I’ll speak in general terms. Usually, each “panel” has separate selections – that is, if you have 4 tables on the screen, and a selection in each table, then the context menu would only apply to the selection in the table that the user is currently pointing to. The same should be true of trees. You might want to read my post on Selection and Active Selection to see more about how to handle multiple selections on the same screen (http://tworivers.com/blog/archives/558). I can’t really imagine a situation where you’d want the context menu to apply to selections in two trees, but I can’t rule it out, either! Designs often surprise me.

Comment on Context Menu design by José Tavares

José Tavares — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 06:44:55 +0000

Thanks for this post!
I found it very useful not only for web applications but for desktop applications too.
I just scheduled a revision of all the context menus in my application to apply some of your guidelines. I have a question though. In my application we have two different trees and in both trees the user can select a node and open a context menu. If the user have nodes selected in both trees, what options should be available via a menu on the application?

You just gained another follower of you site! Thanks!!

Comment on Context Menu design by Wireless Web Studio

Wireless Web Studio — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 08:05:26 +0000

Nice Post, Thank you very much

Comment on Context Menu design by Hagan

Hagan — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 01:26:03 +0000

Mike,

Thanks for the feedback. My next article is going to be about handling multiple selection on a screen, especially with respect to toolbars and commands on those selections. Hopefully that will shed a little more light on what is, indeed, a tricky design problem.

- Hagan

Comment on Context Menu design by Michael Gaigg

Michael Gaigg — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 21:10:33 +0000

This article is fantastic! Especially the section about multiple selections helped me verbalize what we experienced for ourselves just recently. We were developing an app that shows properties side-by-side in a grid and on the map. Multi-selection on the grid makes sense because we can delete multiple, edit multiple, etc. but in addition to solving what you described above we observed users really struggling with what is supposed to happen on the map… Will the properties highlight? Zoom to extent of current (=selected)? multi-selected? what if I trigger editing through context-menu on the map (or in that respect on the grid), will I edit this property only or all? What if they are not visible in the current extent while moving, etc.
We ended up not allowing multi-select but still covering the requirements of multi-delete etc. through menu options.

Many greetings!
Mike

Comment on Stop nesting menus by Hagan

Hagan — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 14:27:34 +0000

I strongly believe that menus should never open on hover – only on click. Once a menu IS open if you have a pull right (which I hope you don’t) the pull right should open on hover or click.

Comment on OmniGraffle & the Application Map by Quora

Quora — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 12:27:00 +0000

Help with creating concepts maps in Omnigraffle…

The site appears to be down right now, but Hagan Rivers created and shared OmninGraffle templates for creating “Application Maps” using the outline tool, and the diagrams semi-automatically lay themselves out. See http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?10…

Comment on Stop nesting menus by Stop nesting menus — two rivers flowing I saw this one on the…

Stop nesting menus — two rivers flowing I saw this one on the… — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 05:14:16 +0000

[...] Stop nesting menus — two rivers flowing I saw this one on the…By things that confuse me – February 6, 2010Posted in: Web design Stop nesting menus — two rivers flowing [...]

Comment on Ellipses… by Hagan

Hagan — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 15:58:31 +0000

Kumar,

The ellipses is a UI convention dating back to desktop applications in the 1970s and 1980s, but these designs were leveraging the English language meaning of ellipses, which is “an unfinished thought”. By using ellipses correctly in applications, we can continue to build user’s understanding of what they mean – that they will be asked for more information.

Comment on Ellipses… by Kumar

Kumar — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 12:24:37 +0000

Hi Hagan, This is very interesting using Ellipses… feature using especially in menus.

How does user should be educated to know that ellipses mean to seek additional information?