Is MouseOver Top Menus Opens Them Possible?

Is MouseOver Top Menus Opens Them Possible?

Trying to make for example File menu open when I mouse over it. It highlights. how would I go about doing this?

wx.Menu doesn’t seem to have any IDs attached to them, so wx.EVT_MENU_HIGHLIGHT has no effect.

How would I go about overriding the highlight functionality for top menus?
EVT_MENU_HIGHLIGHT seem to work fine for MenuItems, but not top level menus.

EVT_ENTER_WINDOW and EVT_LEFT_UP don’t seem to do anything either…

I can’t seem to figure it out. Anyone got any ideas…?

Metallicow wrote:

Is MouseOver Top Menus Opens Them Possible?

Trying to make for example File menu open when I mouse over it. It
highlights. how would I go about doing this?

Don't do this. Please. Application users expect top-level menus to
open when they are clicked, not when they are hovered. It would be way
too distracting. All of the people who have written web sites with
flyout menus deserve to have their eyelashes plucked out one by one.

···

--
Tim Roberts, timr@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.

Followed by every other hair on their bodies...

···

On 21/11/13 18:51, Tim Roberts wrote:

Metallicow wrote:

Is MouseOver Top Menus Opens Them Possible?

Trying to make for example File menu open when I mouse over it. It
highlights. how would I go about doing this?

Don't do this. Please. Application users expect top-level menus to
open when they are clicked, not when they are hovered. It would be way
too distracting. All of the people who have written web sites with
flyout menus deserve to have their eyelashes plucked out one by one.

Maybe you ought to check out Blender and it’s supposed backwards UI(some say archaic lol)… After getting used to I wouldn’t have it any other way, tho this application took a bit of time to learn with changes from 2.49-2.69
Anywho… wx gui’s run in blender also BTW…

I was thinking more of accessibility for those with only one hand… Ya knowOn a mouse or keyboard usually might poke the touchscreen scenerio also, would probably not work out too well tho

Also, blender has one of the best & most productive and speedy menu systems of any 3D application around. The idea does have it’s uses.
Web menus was not my intention. HoverOver/Set Focus On Widget is more annoying In my opinion, but only without a widescreen resolution.

I was looking to make it an option for speed users and an accessibility option. Preference really.
I assume most people have a complaint about mouse gestures also, but I haven’t heard a single complaint yet. Most don’t even know they are constantly doing them with every click, and if they where turned off by default, then the user would think something is bugged.

The wx.MenuItems can be programatically fired off on hover/highlight because they have IDs, but that wouldn’t make any sense at all. Opening a menu would at the very least get you to where you need quicker without clicks.
The concept I’m trying to implement doesn’t go any further than opening up a menu, then the user will have to click on the option they want or right click to cancel.
Or maybe you prefer 3ds Max or Maya style. Z-Brush maybe…?
Not forcing the user to use it, just optional. Just as the other apps have it.

···

On Thursday, November 21, 2013 12:51:17 PM UTC-6, Tim Roberts wrote:

Don’t do this. Please. Application users expect top-level menus to

open when they are clicked, not when they are hovered. It would be way

too distracting. All of the people who have written web sites with

flyout menus deserve to have their eyelashes plucked out one by one.

Metallicow wrote:

I was looking to make it an option for speed users and an
accessibility option. Preference really.
I assume most people have a complaint about mouse gestures also, but I
haven't heard a single complaint yet. Most don't even know they are
constantly doing them with every click, and if they where turned off
by default, then the user would think something is bugged.

If you have a wacky 3D app with some wacky skinnable themed interface,
then please feel free to invent whatever annoyingly clever inventions
you like. Go ahead and make your app look and work like a multiplayer
video game. However, wx is not a particularly good choice for those
apps. wx is used to build traditional desktop applications, and
traditional desktop applications ought to work like traditional desktop
applications.

In other words, if it looks like a Windows menu, then it darned well
ought to act like a Windows menu.

The concept I'm trying to implement doesn't go any further than
opening up a menu, then the user will have to click on the option they
want or right click to cancel.

The balance for that comes down to which is the more common scenario.
Am I more likely to accidentally roll over the menu and be forced to
right-click to cancel, or am I more likely to intentionally roll over
the menu and want it to open? I know where I'd place my money.

Yes, I'm being a curmudgeon. I admit it. There was a time when there
were user interface style guides that people actually followed, written
by people who had done the research, based on genuine user interface
usability studies. Applications followed those guidelines, and that
meant you knew how to use a new application without requiring a manual.

Today, with the rise of web-based CSS-hacking hover-and-fly-out
abominations, and the abysmal hackery encouraged by XAML and its ilk,
each new application is another exercise in frustration and "who the
hell thought that was a good idea." It's similar to the situation when
laser printers first came out. We had all these fonts, so we thought we
needed to USE all of these fonts, and as a result every document looked
like a ransom note. Eventually, I think we'll go back to having and
following UI style guides. In the meantime, I'll be a cranky voice in
the gallery calling for rational user interfaces.

···

--
Tim Roberts, timr@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.

Tim Roberts wrote:

Don't do this. Please. Application users expect top-level menus to
open when they are clicked, not when they are hovered. It would be
way too distracting. All of the people who have written web sites
with flyout menus deserve to have their eyelashes plucked out one by
one.

Could not agree more as a screen reader user.

Metallicow wrote:

I was thinking more of accessibility for those with only one hand...
Ya know*On a mouse or keyboard usually* *might poke the touchscreen
scenerio also, would probably not work out too well tho*

From an accessibility point of view, I expect to be presented with the
menu bar when I press Alt, not the File menu. On Windows, the Spotify
desktop application's menus behave in this non-standard way, which is
just one of its many accessibility shortcomings.

···

--
James Scholes
http://twitter.com/JamesScholes

While I understand and also agree with some of your peevs, the intention is not for general-use desktop apps.
Specialized apps. As for the foreseeable future this specific feature isn’t gonna leak to any other apps I build. So I understand and feel your pain with me asking.
This is probably where everyone got this idea from anyway. Blender. Before Al Gore Invented the internet(Har har har).
I agree that if not a similar type 3D/Animation app or something specific, It is not needed and causes people general frustration, especially with the whole web-page thing.
A web-page isn’t Auto-CAD for criminy. It’s a simple scrolling PDF or .chm per say… intended more for reading than interacting.
If I payed $4000 for an app and their website had popouts like that, I’d probably call them and complain also. And probably never buy another one of their products again.

Now If blender implemented their menu-ing functionality into their new website, I would smile and laugh, because chances are only blender users would know how to do it right.
Hence other web-master’s imitation failures.

Real-world examples
Multi-$$ Avatar/Tears of Steel(http://mango.blender.org/)(Free by the way…) like-films, which people enjoy watching. Which in the end comes burnt on a frizbee like plastic disc or downloaded.

Corporate Logo Example. Commercials & advertising & promotion.
http://imageshack.us/a/img35/4231/j29.gif
http://imageshack.us/a/img34/4717/f4l4.png

3D Printing Example: The guy @ Walmart your gonna pay $16 an hour for 2 days don’t know squat(especially about the mechanical end of it…). All for a chess board that could have been injection molded and not be special and sold to millions and look like crap… But then again, it’s custom, just like my wooden one, hand carved.
http://imageshack.us/a/img713/9782/wallpaperchess04.png

While I can implement a StaticText/FlatMenu/FlatToolBar/Or Custom Drawn Menu to do this, the simple question is again simplicity: Can I do this with a standard wx.Menu without too much headache? There is no need to overcomplicate what will become a standard simple stupid plugin for blender.
Basically I’m looking on how to overide the default frame menubar if at all?

@ James: Blender doesn’t use Alt for that. Why you ask…?
Because, Yes, there really that many features and functions and commands. Plus Alt is better off as a modifier key for shortcuts in an app with as much stuff/commands as it does.

Not sure why spotify does it. No reason really. It doesn’t take much brains or time to download some tunes, unless it is the internet archive, and if so, just sleep it off on the timer overnight. Not much user attention is necessary for something such as that. It is pretty much a background app and doesn’t require constant attention.

@lso another nice feature, which I beleive Adobe Photoshop CS2 was the first popular inovators of was the menus… customizer, coupled with the keyboard shortcuts dialog.
When I get some time, I’m gonna replicate that also, by duplicating and modifing existing AGW ShortcutEditorDialog. Then folks will be able to easily see what has changed in the app from version to version with simple coloring presets.
Anywho… just a few more ideas that became real popular in the customize department.

···

On Thursday, November 21, 2013 5:06:48 PM UTC-6, Tim Roberts wrote:

Metallicow wrote:

I was looking to make it an option for speed users and an

accessibility option. Preference really.

I assume most people have a complaint about mouse gestures also, but I

haven’t heard a single complaint yet. Most don’t even know they are

constantly doing them with every click, and if they where turned off

by default, then the user would think something is bugged.

If you have a wacky 3D app with some wacky skinnable themed interface,

then please feel free to invent whatever annoyingly clever inventions

you like. Go ahead and make your app look and work like a multiplayer

video game. However, wx is not a particularly good choice for those

apps. wx is used to build traditional desktop applications, and

traditional desktop applications ought to work like traditional desktop

applications.

In other words, if it looks like a Windows menu, then it darned well

ought to act like a Windows menu.

The concept I’m trying to implement doesn’t go any further than

opening up a menu, then the user will have to click on the option they

want or right click to cancel.

The balance for that comes down to which is the more common scenario.
Am I more likely to accidentally roll over the menu and be forced to

right-click to cancel, or am I more likely to intentionally roll over

the menu and want it to open? I know where I’d place my money.

Yes, I’m being a curmudgeon. I admit it. There was a time when there

were user interface style guides that people actually followed, written

by people who had done the research, based on genuine user interface

usability studies. Applications followed those guidelines, and that

meant you knew how to use a new application without requiring a manual.

Today, with the rise of web-based CSS-hacking hover-and-fly-out

abominations, and the abysmal hackery encouraged by XAML and its ilk,

each new application is another exercise in frustration and "who the

hell thought that was a good idea." It’s similar to the situation when

laser printers first came out. We had all these fonts, so we thought we

needed to USE all of these fonts, and as a result every document looked

like a ransom note. Eventually, I think we’ll go back to having and

following UI style guides. In the meantime, I’ll be a cranky voice in

the gallery calling for rational user interfaces.


Tim Roberts, ti...@probo.com

Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.

One of the biggest challenges I have on a day to day basis is trying to persuade some developers of the following:
1) You need to try your stuff on the minimal hardware, and the most common scenario,
2) Consistency is always appreciated,
3) Just because you can doesn't mean you should,
4) Where the user has to start most of the time should be the most obvious place to start,
5) The developer is not usually the main user,
6) Consider the your users might not have your background & abilities,
7) Internationalisation, screen readers, keyboard short-cuts, etc., are almost always worth considering, cost next to no effort and pay dividends.

Would you believe that 3 days ago I had to explain to a developer with many years experience what those funny ampersands were doing scattered through menu names that he kept seeing in UI code.

Gadget/Steve

···

On 21/11/13 23:07, James Scholes wrote:

Tim Roberts wrote:

Don't do this. Please. Application users expect top-level menus to
open when they are clicked, not when they are hovered. It would be
way too distracting. All of the people who have written web sites
with flyout menus deserve to have their eyelashes plucked out one by
one.

Could not agree more as a screen reader user.

Metallicow wrote:

I was thinking more of accessibility for those with only one hand...
Ya know*On a mouse or keyboard usually* *might poke the touchscreen
scenerio also, would probably not work out too well tho*

>From an accessibility point of view, I expect to be presented with the
menu bar when I press Alt, not the File menu. On Windows, the Spotify
desktop application's menus behave in this non-standard way, which is
just one of its many accessibility shortcomings.

Yes, Steve, I’m nodding.

(7)i18n. The whole&& ampersand thing took me a bit to wrap my head around when I first started GUI, and yes, it has it’s place as a standard or common, In my opinion.
Tho it still confuses me (and them also) sometimes why almost every new developer has such a confusion as to the special syntax and to why it is that way… Maybe the age old genie knows why if I had a wish left… Haha
At first my code started looking like “The MenuItem”,
then it was consistently “The MenuItem” with & randomly placed in it,
then on third conversion it became _(“&%s”) The Whole fist Letter thing…,
Now I am faced with many multiple items that have the save Letter to start with,
which brings me to the conclusion, that while simplicity and accessibility is important, I and others cannot sometimes justify spending quite a bit of time
sorting out all the ampersand possabilities, when if the fact is that if you cannot use a mouse for the said app, then the users or handicapped users experience is sometimes hindered.
@Note: What we need is AlphabetSOUP generators for this!
Ex: Use Win32(on Win) to snake a open programs menu into memory and then iterate over the top level menuitems(which are most important ones) and then generate for example a help file, or in my suggestion,
_(%s\t%s) %(&AlphaBETSoup, KeyboardShortcut) or similar.

With blender, I can at least say they go to extreme lengths, to provide 3-mouse button functionality for those that only have 1-2 mouse button functionality, which means if you where 1-handed, then you would almost have severe problems just working with the app.
This kind of attention to detail is sometimes what is missed in todays applications. Let-alone voice functionalities(such as microsoft sam)(which is amusing by the way, as is the dragon you must feed along the way, that can’t type worth a claw)

(4)(6) The most important apps I know uses this: Esc-Esc-Esc. Or has tweakability to do so. It Quits everything or does what you want it to. 1 button three times, not Alt + button, which would be two buttons or more pressed.
I have spent a good portion deal of my life talking and dealing with disabled vets, some of which are blind, and some which have only one hand, amongs’t other problems. When I carried a phone, I recall I would often be working on a vehicle, rolling around on the ground, only to find out that what bugged me was the fact that 911 kept calling me back because this STUPID phone keppt pocket calling with 999(God-Thankfully the car didn’t fall of the jack ATM I answered it) (Nowadays we have key-lock, which is another issue I won’t get into now.).
Accomodating their suggestions first, in my mind, would almost trump anything/one else’s ui complaints to me. And the first suggestion is an alternative solution, or so I hear… What that may be is not for me to decide as long as I provide the option for those in need. When they need it, they just usually ask how, then understand that someone has took great lengths for such few individuals, at times, and may ask for a small bit of help setting up, but them are happy with being able to use an application that otherwise would be unusable to them.

So as far as accessibility is concerned, it should be at the top of the help file explaining why at the very least. (4) Or (F1(1-key) / Esc-Esc-Esc) to get to that point.
As far as (3), that is a fine line inbetween perfection and users pref and vise versa.

(2) Almost Impossible in today’s world.

(5) With blender everyone is a developer.

(1) common…thinks meh. Most users are resistant to change.
Tho… Apple 1-button mouse(NO-WAY!), but on a old-school apple shaped green-transparent-plastic monitor,YEA COOL for nostalgia… playing non the less Oregon Trail(sorry if you died of the plague right before getting there), It wasn’t my fault.

(0) Still no answer on the wx.Menu wx.EVT_MENU_HIGHLIGHT funct question. Oh well, try, try again… Nice chattting tho…

···

On Friday, November 22, 2013 12:00:12 AM UTC-6, Gadget Steve wrote:

On 21/11/13 23:07, James Scholes wrote:

Tim Roberts wrote:

One of the biggest challenges I have on a day to day basis is trying to
persuade some developers of the following:

  1. You need to try your stuff on the minimal hardware, and the most
    common scenario,

  2. Consistency is always appreciated,

  3. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should,

  4. Where the user has to start most of the time should be the most
    obvious place to start,

  5. The developer is not usually the main user,

  6. Consider the your users might not have your background & abilities,

  7. Internationalisation, screen readers, keyboard short-cuts, etc., are
    almost always worth considering, cost next to no effort and pay dividends.

Would you believe that 3 days ago I had to explain to a developer with
many years experience what those funny ampersands were doing scattered
through menu names that he kept seeing in UI code.

Gadget/Steve