[DUG] TUMONZ SDK beta program - general GUI design

[Phil Middlemiss]

There are so many ways that the interface could work, the most important 
thing I wanted to achieve with it was that even if it was different to 
other programs (inevitable), it would be instantly usable anyway.

The mapplet interface uses left and right mouse clicks for zoom in and 
out respectively. If you click and drag you get rectangular zoom. I 
figured that this was the most intuitive since the first thing most 
people will do when faced with a map and no instructions is click 
roughly where you want to go. Doing this zooms in - animated so you get 
the context. The overview also gives visual clues as to whats happening. 
So immediately you get feedback that left click is zoom in.

The next thing people will want to do is zoom out and the first thing 
most people try is the right mouse button. Voila. The decision to use 
click and drag for rectangle zoom instead of pan was simply so you could 
zoom in faster rather than click, click, click etc.... The zoom out goes 
twice as far as the zoom in so even if you never find the panning 
function (there is a help page, but we know nobody reads it), you have 
enough tools to easily and quickly move around the map (especially with 
the Jump-to list).

For the more adventurous, there is instant feedback with the cursor if 
you hold down the Shift key. And then there's the overview too which 
let's you do all sorts of things, hopefully intuitively.

Cheers,
Phil.

Guy.Brown at sungard.com wrote:
> Question for Phil:  If I purchase the property module for version 2 will
> it still be able to be used with version 3?
>   
Absolutely.
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