[DUG] TUMONZ SDK beta program - general GUI design

[Guy.Brown at sungard.com]

For sure, skin a cat, many ways etc etc.  FYI my typical usage of a
mapping program (windows based, I haven't used Tumonz live other than to
try it out) it to do a text search for a location, click on that
location so that the map will bring me to that location hopefully at a
reasonable zoom level.  Then pan around that location.  I never find a
location by locating it on a big scale then zooming into it so for me
zoom is a very rarely used feature.

Guy

-----Original Message-----
From: delphi-bounces at ns3.123.co.nz [mailto:delphi-bounces at ns3.123.co.nz]
On Behalf Of 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.

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