A few comments on exits

[Terry Disz]

Susanne,

That sounds good, I'll check it out today.

As far as a map, I thought a lot about that and  what I am asking for is
just the ability to:

a) know where I came from, as in a special highlight or placement of that
exit
b) the ability to look ahead as I desire, giving me control of how much
information is displayed.

That can easily be accomplished if you:

1. Provide an indication on each exit that tells if it's room also has
exits.
2. Give me the ability to recursively open that room and see if it's room
also has exits. This would work like a windows explorer layout, giving the
user control of what levels are displayed, where to apply focus, etc.

These two simple things would  give the user complete control of locational
context, which is sorely lacking today. Navigation could be performed with a
sense of purpose and direction, not just random wandering through the
warren. This works regardless of the complexity of room interconnections
because it gives the user control of display.


Terry


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Susanne Lefvert [mailto:lefvert at mcs.anl.gov]
> Sent: Friday, March 21, 2003 9:15 AM
> To: disz at mcs.anl.gov
> Cc: ag-dev at mcs.anl.gov
> Subject: Re: A few comments on exits
>
>
> I have changed the door icon to a smaller (but still very cute) image and
> am trying to make the exits list more space efficient by having icon and
> text next to each other instead of text being placed under icon.
>
> I definitely think that we should try to figure out how users should be
> able to find the venue they are looking for as easy as possible. However,
> I personally have two concerns regarding the building of a UI map:
>
> * In the real world, buildings etc are planned by an architect that
> makes sure everything is going to be laid out properly. In our case we
> have no rules on how to connect rooms to each other, it is a virtual
> space, so mapping this in a UI will be hard. In the real world we can't
> connect a room with 100 other rooms and expect it to work, as we can in
> the virtual venue space.
>
> * The dynamic nature of connections will make the creation of a map
> difficult. The layout of rooms have to be made programmatically, and how
> to make this look good, I don't know...
>
> Susanne
>
>
> On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Terry Disz wrote:
>
> > I don't find the exits list to be very efficient and it doesn't
> provide me
> > with enough information.
> >
> > The door thingy is cute, but takes up too much room. The vertical
> > arrangement of door and name wastes space. There is no context
> provided, so
> > I find it easy to be lost. I would like to see something that
> showed where I
> > came from, and the ability to expand, like explorer, the next
> level exits in
> > each exit so I could do a little look-ahead.
> >
> >
> > Terry
> >
> >
>