RE: Foal 0.4 release (Familiar Open Application Launch er) (+ DOCKING)

Regarding keeping the stylus on the touchscreen: once the cursor is on a
button, simply lift off the stylus and the tooltip will pop up without
pressure on the touchscreen.

Regarding it's behaviour, yes I agree it would be annoying if used all the
time but I find that they're benefical initially to learn the meaning of
icons but then can be ignored (just click on button without leaving cursor
there - avoiding a more intentional act) once grasped.

Of course it's your beasty so design it as you wish :)

Greg

-----Original Message-----
From: James ''Wez'' Weatherall [mailto:jnw22@cam.ac.uk]
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2001 10:21 AM
To: Greg Berenfield; rn-handhelds@crynwr.com
Cc: familiar@handhelds.org
Subject: Re: [Familiar] Foal 0.4 release (Familiar Open Application
Launcher) (+ DOCKING)

> Regarding tooltips, I implemented them in pypaq and haven't had any
> problems.

> If the mouse cursor is dragged on top of a button, after 2-3 secs, the
> tooltip pops up and the action the button initiates is not activated.

I've just tried this, and found it very irritating to use. :( The problem
for me is partly that, at least on my touch screen, the mouse wobbles while
I'm holding the pen against the screen, and that finding a spare space with
no widget from which to drag the cursor over the target button was tricky.
I'm also keen to avoid having to hold the pen against the screen for
prolonged periods. For most applications, tooltips accessed via QueryTips
seem like the logical way to go.

For Foal, the idea was to make the menu a very quick, non-intrusive thing to
operate - unlike a real application, you don't *use* Foal as such, so it
should get in the way as little as possible. Normal apps can afford to
force the user to learn a litle bit since typically they actually want to
use them.

Perhaps I'm just being picky, though.

James "Wez" Weatherall

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