[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Scrollbars [patch]

[Mike Kaufman <mkaufman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Aug 04, 2001 at 08:37:37PM -0700, Kevin Brown wrote:
> Daniel Speyer <Daniel_Speyer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Here is my proposed fix to the isometric scrollbar bug.  It does away with
> > the scrollbars entirely and replaces them with eight buttons.  This is,
> > IMO, much more elegant than scrollbars.  It also solves the difficulty I
> > had when I first began using isometric of matching what happens on the big
> > and small maps.
> 
> I've made significant improvements to this code.  See the patch below.
> 
> It now uses GTK timeouts, and will accelerate the scrolling depending
> on how long you hold the button down (max 3 steps per scroll right
> now).
> 
> I had to use a trick (see buttonpress_instance) to get buttonpresses
> happening in quick succession to work the way you'd expect.
> 
> Comments?

in all seriousness, the revised patch is only slightly better that Daniel's. 
You are right, I think, that the direction of movement is more intuitive than 
with the use of scrollbars, but I think that these solutions (so far anyway) do 
more harm than good. Even with the new patch, movement across the map using the 
buttons is _very_ choppy, whereas with the scrollbars, it's quite smooth. Also, 
and I'm not sure how you'd fix this: when I release the button on the mouse, I 
want the map to stop moving _now_. Not in a second, but right then.

Think about this in terms of user friendliness: start up a new game so your 
dudes show up as a small colored spot on the overview map. move off well into 
the black. now using the buttons or scrollbars, move the map right back to your 
guys. Don't over or undershoot. For me, using the "accelerated scrolling", it's 
almost impossible and takes forever to get there. Using the scrollbars, it's 
trivial and extremely fast. I don't want to do this: hmm, if I hold down the 
mouse button for _just this long_, then the map will stop moving just where I 
want it. which is what it comes down to, see my previous post, if I wanted 
small map movement, I just right click to center the map, it's only for long 
movement which I use the scroll features. (maybe we should just waste scrolling 
altogether and make people click on the overview canvas?)

-mike