Hello again all,
This memo will serve to be the genus for what I would eventually like to propose. I'm hoping for plenty of feedback from everyone to make this tool as useful as possible. The core concept is quite simple really, enumerate and visually explain all editable parameters of a given shape on the canvas in a single floating palette.
1. Problem Although much work is being done to promote existing dialogs to the status of sane players on the workspace front, there are still pitfalls in having all manner of oversized and disproportionate dialogs open on the screen. Namely is simple visual clutter. Having several windows open at once can cause both new users to become lost quickly, and more seasoned users wasting time fidgeting with dialogs to position them according to their wishes. 2. Accessibility concerns Using many dialogs, users that cannot or do not use the mouse are asked to traverse 3 tiers of information to edit shape data outside the canvas. First they must achieve focus on a dialog ( ctrl+# ) , second they must select ( in some cases ) a tab containing the subset of data they wish to manipulate ( tab key? ) and third they must gain focus on the cell or control that allows them to make the edit ( tab key? ).
3. Solution Provide an additional ( or alternative depending on how you lean ) palette for editing shape properties that contains an hierarchical list of property groups and properties. This window would behave exactly as other palettes ( esc to focus canvas, enter to affect change ), but would centralize object properties in one dialog minimizing the memory cost to the user for keyboard shortcuts to open dialogs ( they would only need one, and we could make it an easy one, cmd+i // get info // ) Once the dialog has focus, the user could then use the arrow keys to locate the property they wish to edit and affect the change desired. While it may seem that we will lose the specificity of multiple dialogs, this interface would provide us with a more open method of combining property sets, and in the future it could be used as the basis for generating custom property dialogs per user utilizing xml documents to store dialog layout information.
4. A few key points It appears that currently, you cannot enter a numerical value in the float fields of the color dialog, is this intended behavior? Users would be able to close tree paths in this new properties palette that they might not use often, this allows the user to immediately improve their productivity when performing these types of edits.
Thanks for your time as always, I hope this stirs the pot a bit.
-Thomas