Looking Glass and Summer of Code

[William Tracy]

> What are the benefits of having this kind of menu except animation?
> What kind of usability improvements we can expect?

The key idea is the menu history displayed on the left. Rather than
having cascading menus spreading all over the screen, the most recent
menu is displayed along with a list of the parent menus. The user can
go back up in the hierarchy by clicking the name of the menu they want
to return to.

Looking Glass already uses the idea of only displaying the most recent
menu, but going back up in the hierarchy is confusing in the current
interface. Normally, the last entry in the menu takes you back up a
level, but not always (sometimes its the *second* to the last entry
that takes you back up). In addition, the "go back" menu entry is not
highlighted in any way, and it is not immediately apparent to a new
user that it is anything other than yet another program icon.

After I made the animation, I discovered that the Windows Vista start
menu is built around a similar idea, although my design is a bit more
compact. (Vista basically takes the Explorer metaphor of a collapsible
tree and jams it inside of the start menu.)

The animation is just eye candy. :-)

William