Radial context menus

[guibert]

I'd like to see a "radial context style menu" available. This is a fairly new concept for GUIs and it'd be really great to see JIDE/Java at the forefront.

For an example, search for "radial" here in this blog posting, and then see the linked video:

http://juicability.blogspot.com/2005/09 ... ntext.html

Also, any of you with Tablet PCs would be familiar with this if you use the Screen clipping tool: <br><br> .

[JIDE Support]

Thanks for this creative suggestion. I have to say radial interface is a great user interface concept. One thing I can see which is an advantage over the conventional context menu is the distance to each menu item will be the same. We will definitely keep it in mind.

Thanks,

[PatrickGotthardt]

Hi. Any progress on this one? I thought of creating it myself, but if you're going to do it there would be no need for me to do it ('specially because your component would be a lot better than mine ).

It really is a great concept and it works really well in practice (there's a plugin for Firefox that integrates such an menu). I could point you to that plugin if you'd like to - I'm using Opera now, so I would have to find it first.

[JIDE Support]

Please let me know where I can get the plugin you mentioned.

Thanks,

[PatrickGotthardt]

You can get it from here (there are also some screenshots):
http://www.radialthinking.de/radialcontext/

[StrautC]

If you're interested in seeing another pie menu implementation, check out the right-click context menu that the folks at the University of Washington use in their DENIM project:

http://dub.washington.edu/projects/denim/download/

They're using AWT/Swing too! I'd love to see one of these added to your product.

[JIDE Support]

I personally think there is a usability issue with the radial menu. Believe it or not, I find it hard to find the menu item I want comparing to traditional popup menu. I guess this is related to the way human eyes scan. It is much easier to scan vertically to find the item than scan in a circle. As I said earlier, there are benefits which is mouse travels less distance to get to each menu item. Unfortunately we don't have the resource to make one but I would love to see if someone is willing to contribute one to JIDE Common Layer as it is now open sourced.

Thanks,