Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 15th May 2008 21:10 UTC, submitted by Eugenia
Read Write Web has an interesting article on the concept of the contextual user interface. A contextual user interface - as the name implies - is an interface which adapts to the current wishes of its users, the context. The interface will change according to the actions the user takes; present a set of minimal options, and show other options as the user goes along. While the article makes some good points, it also contains some generalisations that I find rather debatable.
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Member since:
2005-07-06
This article seems to look at how bad Microsoft has handled self-configuring menus and then tar and feather all possible versions with the same brush.
Because of my Mom I have been forced to use Windows ME version of this idea, and while the implementation is a royal pain just a little thought makes it clear that this could be made so much easier to use, and the simplified menus would indeed be faster to use than ones that show everything.
Problems and Solution:
Number of visible menu items. In WinME it seems to be limited to the five(5) most used items in a menu. Give me an option to raise it to ten(10) and I would be a happy camper. Others will have diffirent numbers, and yes I would like global as well as per menu column options.
Ordering. At present the order of the items display is still the same order they are found in on the full menu. There are cases where I would like control of that order on the shorten menus. The original choice makes sense 90% of the time, but if you really use a single option alot moving it to the top (manually) would help a lot too.
Submenus. At present submenu options do not appear directly in the shorten menu. Again there are limited cases where a manual option to do this would be a big help in using some programs.