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Does anyone other than me have a cognitive problem with pie menus? For some reason I have to slow down and think about what I should do to use them. I have tr

by mchahn 8y ago

Does anyone other than me have a cognitive problem with pie menus? For some reason I have to slow down and think about what I should do to use them. I have tried and tried and it doesn't get easy. I use autodesk daily and it offers pie menus everywhere but I avoid them.

TuringTest 8y ago
For me at least, I believe part of the reason is the circular visual layout of the menu, which makes it hard to scan. With traditional context menus, I usually develop muscle memory that helps me aim to the desired option. With pie menus this is not needed, but scanning the available options feels weird, as there's no clear left-to-right reading sequence. I would love a "square pie" menu that combined the improvements of pie menus (click-and-drag to select, infinite size) with a square, table-like layout surrounding the cursor above, below and to the sides of the initial mouse click point. Something like this (where <¬ is the mouse cursor): .___.___.___ | A | B | C | |___|___|___| | D | <¬ | E | |___|___|___| | F | |__________| | G | |__________|
- TuringTest 8y ago
  This is a step in the right direction, although still a little bit too scary for normal users accustomed to classic context menus: https://addons.mozilla.org/mn/firefox/addon/radialcontext-mz/?collection_uuid=0effcdf3%26%2345%3Be984%26%2345%3Bed45%26%2345%3B6348%26%2345%3B379801e60b45 https://addons.mozilla.org/mn/firefox/addon/radialcontext-mz...
- wz1000 8y ago
  Xmonad has something called grid select, which works kind of like a combination of pie menus and a grid, while also being keyboard navigable(I use vim keybindings hjkl). http://maskray.me/static/xmonad-grid-select.jpg http://maskray.me/static/xmonad-grid-select.jpg https://hackage.haskell.org/package/xmonad-contrib-0.13/docs/XMonad-Actions-GridSelect.html https://hackage.haskell.org/package/xmonad-contrib-0.13/docs...

by mchahn 8y ago

TuringTest 8y ago

For me at least, I believe part of the reason is the circular visual layout of the menu, which makes it hard to scan. With traditional context menus, I usually develop muscle memory that helps me aim to the desired option. With pie menus this is not needed, but scanning the available options feels weird, as there's no clear left-to-right reading sequence. I would love a "square pie" menu that combined the improvements of pie menus (click-and-drag to select, infinite size) with a square, table-like layout surrounding the cursor above, below and to the sides of the initial mouse click point. Something like this (where <¬ is the mouse cursor): .___.___.___ | A | B | C | |___|___|___| | D | <¬ | E | |___|___|___| | F | |__________| | G | |__________|

TuringTest 8y ago
This is a step in the right direction, although still a little bit too scary for normal users accustomed to classic context menus: https://addons.mozilla.org/mn/firefox/addon/radialcontext-mz/?collection_uuid=0effcdf3%26%2345%3Be984%26%2345%3Bed45%26%2345%3B6348%26%2345%3B379801e60b45 https://addons.mozilla.org/mn/firefox/addon/radialcontext-mz...
wz1000 8y ago
Xmonad has something called grid select, which works kind of like a combination of pie menus and a grid, while also being keyboard navigable(I use vim keybindings hjkl). http://maskray.me/static/xmonad-grid-select.jpg http://maskray.me/static/xmonad-grid-select.jpg https://hackage.haskell.org/package/xmonad-contrib-0.13/docs/XMonad-Actions-GridSelect.html https://hackage.haskell.org/package/xmonad-contrib-0.13/docs...