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phetsims / balancing-chemical-equations

"Balancing Chemical Equations" is an educational simulation in HTML5, by PhET Interactive Simulations.
http://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulation/balancing-chemical-equations
GNU General Public License v3.0
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mouseArea on molecules box open/close could be larger #87

Closed learnthinkteach closed 10 years ago

learnthinkteach commented 10 years ago

The molecules view boxes would be easier to open and close using a mouse if the hit area were larger around the red - or green +. The buttons themselves would not need resizing. Alternatively, the "closed' position could allow for tapping the words "reactants" or "products" to open the box.

This is a non-urgent enhancement/suggestion.

pixelzoom commented 10 years ago

We typically assume that people are able to be more precise with a mouse, so don't adjust too many mouseArea. But perhaps this is a legitimate exception. And it's very easy to make the mouseArea bigger. The touchArea is already quite a bit bigger. Screenshot below shows tochAreas with red dashed lines, mouseAreas with blue. The example/collapse buttons don't show any blue lines because their mouseAreas have not been adjusted.

So… some options:

  1. Make the mouseArea a bit larger, but not quite as large at the touchArea.
  2. Make the expand/collapse buttons a bit larger. We certainly have room, and this issue makes me wonder why they are so small.
  3. Both 1 & 2.

Assigning to @ycarpenterphet to evaluate.

screenshot_132

pixelzoom commented 10 years ago

As for tapping the 'Reactants' or 'Products' labels to open the boxes… Could do. It would be non-trivial work, and I'm skeptical that anyone would ever find this feature.

learnthinkteach commented 10 years ago

I'd say it's not worth the work to be able to tap/click the words. After an hour of testing my fingers were getting a little tired, so I was looking to save time/energy by clicking close to the box, like I would if I were tapping.

samreid commented 10 years ago

May be good to discuss with @jbphet--I thought we discussed making it so you could click anywhere in a closed accordion box to open it, and click anywhere in the top of the open accordion box (including on the title label) to close it.

ycarpenterphet commented 10 years ago

This situation is a little different from the expand/collapse usage in sims like Build an Atom, where their purpose is to scaffold the content, and is intended for student-use (with teacher-use as a bonus). In those cases, the title is always visible, and it makes sense for the control (touch or pointer) area to be the whole title bar area.

In BCE, however, there is no visible title when the accordion box is open, and the content of the open box (molecules) covers part of the title bar region, so it would be strange (and non-intuitive/non-cued) to tap the top portion of the accordion box to close. Also, this feature is expected to be used almost entirely by teachers only.

As such, I don't want the actual visible buttons to be larger (since they shouldn't be particularly attractive for folks to click on). So, no to option 2.

I'd prefer to go with option 1 - slightly increase the mouseArea. Additionally, please increase the touchArea to match the larger touch area indicated in Build an Atom (not the whole title bar area, but the red dotted line that shows up around the +/- icons in BAA, which is larger than the one in BCE).

pixelzoom commented 10 years ago

I increased the touchArea to match Build An Atom, and increased the mouseArea a bit. Here's a screenshot.

screenshot_348