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geneontology / noctua

Graph-based modeling environment for biology, including prototype editor and services
http://noctua.geneontology.org/
BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License
38 stars 12 forks source link

Explore halo and fan style interfaces in the graph editor UI #349

Closed kltm closed 2 years ago

kltm commented 8 years ago

Working from the comment here: https://github.com/geneontology/noctua/issues/286#issuecomment-180663221, I'd like to explore halo-type or fan-type contextual interfaces for object operations in the graph editor.

This idea seems to cause bad flashbacks in some cases, but I think the idea here is more an evolutionary iteration on what we have. We would like an interface with less clicks, but we have a large queue of requests for more features and interfaces/dialogs tied to what will be new buttons. What we already have is confusing and small, with no real estate that we can surrender, yet we'd like to have larger and more expressive icons and buttons for what we have.

The idea would be (along the lines of) removing all visible buttons from objects in the editor, and having them display on hover or click. To get more real estate, the buttons and action would be displayed around or near the object.

kltm commented 8 years ago

Example of a possible future: before mouseover, there is nothing over an entity:

bar

With mouseover, a "halo" becomes available around the entity, allowing further action:

foo

cmungall commented 8 years ago

I remain skeptical - not so much for the halo itself (seems awesome for games), but more for the general direction of trying to do too much in the graph view. Some operations are inherently graphical (creating a flow between activities), some are inherently more filling-in stuff. I'm not convinced lego editors need this level of point-and-clickiness. See for example #352

kltm commented 8 years ago

No argument, but there is going to be a lack of real estate for buttons either way--people are getting confused with just the three we have there now. Also, I think we're seeing different things here, we're trying to reduce the pointing and clickiness and scrolling with this. Think about the amount of time to clone in the current versus the proposed.

vanaukenk commented 2 years ago

Closing for now; not actively being worked on.