Subject:
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Re: Suggestion: streamline highlighting interface
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.admin.suggestions
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Date:
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Wed, 13 Sep 2006 16:14:17 GMT
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Viewed:
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5280 times
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In lugnet.admin.suggestions, Rene Hoffmeister wrote:
> Does anybody has serious concerns regarding this suggestion?
My guess would be that there are a number of reasons it is the way it is,
although how likely they are intentional and of utmost importance, I can't say.
1) Making it be 3 mouse clicks decreases the chance that someone accidentally
highlights/spotlights/unlights something
2) The initial highlight/spotlight was also done as a select-list (with 11
options, 0-100 by 10's), so the current functionality probably inherited the
existing select-list code.
3) From a design perspective, there's a tremendous difference between power
users and intuitive use. Power users want keystrokes and a low volume of clicks.
However, in order to accomodate power users, interfaces can start to look
grossly confusing. 3 buttons (say) might look very cluttered, and still would
require a way of showing what option was presently selected, so there's even
more to put on the screen.
4) Putting it at the bottom of the post makes a good deal of sense for most
users, because the time that you're supposed to decide to highlight something is
after you've *read* the post, not beforehand. So, if you've just finished
reading, your screen should already have the highlight/spotlight box in it,
instead of forcing you to scoll back up the page.
I know for 4), there are people who read Lugnet via NNTP or SMTP, and when they
want to spotlight something, they have to switch to the web interface, go to the
message, scroll down the page, and click off their spotlight preference, without
needing to re-read the message. So, in that instance, yes, having the spotlight
at the top of the page would be easier.
There's the possibility of putting it at the top AND bottom of the page, but
again, there's clutter encroachment, and it might look confusing, especially on
short posts.
I think I'd prefer to keep it the way it is-- very clean, pretty intuitive
(assuming you know what "spotlight/highlight" means), and located right where
you want it 90% of the time.
Ultimately, though, the best solution isn't to change it for *everyone*, but
have user preferences, so perhaps you could control where the
highlight/spotlight was, and whether it was in single-click format or drop-down
format.
Hm. Another possibility might be to have a "NNTP/SMTP QuickView" or something. A
view of the post which can be linked to on NNTP/SMTP messages at the bottom of
the message, which jumps right to a special version of the post view, with the
highlight/spotlight options right at the top. Hm. Actually, I suppose that works
much better for SMTP, where there's at least the possibility of figuring out
whether or not someone is a member before appending a link that won't help most
people. Hm.
DaveE
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