rangeslider

Joseph Scheuhammer clown at utoronto.ca
Fri Apr 18 20:39:52 UTC 2008


Eli,

The style guide group is purposefully ignoring rendering issues, and 
trying to define a set of keystrokes for each widget.  One of the 
guidelines is if one can do X with a mouse, how can that functionality 
be attained using the keyboard?

> Or maybe the recommendation is that spatial orientation of values 
> along the continuum should always map to the culturally appropriate 
> orientation for increasing and decreasing values and that the arrow 
> key bindings map to that spatial orientation.

Yes, that is part of the recommendation.

> What would be nice is if the audible feedback could provide cues when 
> the indicator reaches either limit and perhaps why. Interesting problem. 

That brings back memories.  In a former life, we did an audio "look and 
feel" for the swing set (Java GUI toolkit).  For sliders, the audio 
involved the chromatic scale, which divided the range into 13 
semi-tones.  It's similar to the tonal change when filling a glass, or 
tapping a ruler on the edge of a table at different points along its 
length.  If one arrowed up the slider, the audio feedback was: (1) the 
note corresponding to the old value, and (2) the next note on the 
chromatic scale.  The intent was to tell the user where they were coming 
from, and what direction they were moving.  With a little bit of 
exposure, you could tell when you reached the end points of the slider.  
Don't know why though -- is the chromatic scale just part of everyone's 
psyche, or is some musical ability needed?

Not that that has much to do with the point at hand...just reminiscing.

-- 
;;;;joseph

'This is not war -- this is pest control!'
      - "Doomsday", Dalek Leader -




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