[kepler-dev] New Kepler Menus

Laura L. Downey ldowney at lternet.edu
Wed Feb 1 08:16:29 PST 2006


Matthew has already commented on the toggling issue so there is a way to
turn on/off the highlighting during workflow execution.

In terms of the phraseology, I kept "Run" in the "Run with Feedback" item to
keep all the "run" items associated.  We have Run and Run Window and users
in some of the early testing really liked the "animation" where they could
see which actor was executing so I'm proposing to make that the default
(checked) option so that running with feedback is the default.  Because I
wanted to keep the "Run" association, I suggested Run with Feedback because
Run with Animation just didn't sound right to me.

We can certainly adjust the phraseology if it proves to be problematic.
Although I suspect that if someone turns it off and sees they don't get the
highlighting during execution they will easily understand what Run with
Feedback means.  The use of the term feedback may be a bit human factors
centric on my part since that is so often used in my field to mean
communicating with the user -- giving them appropriate visual and textual
feedback etc. And of course feedback does mean different things in different
contexts, just as Edward pointed out from his perspective.  But feedback is
also a very general term that just means give me some indication on what is
happening.

Laura L. Downey
Senior Usability Engineer
LTER Network Office
Department of Biology, MSC03 2020
1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM  87131-0001
505.277.3157 office
505.610.9657 mobile
505.277-2541 fax
ldowney at lternet.edu
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Matthew Brooke [mailto:brooke at nceas.ucsb.edu] 
Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2006 8:43 PM
To: Dan Higgins
Cc: Laura L. Downey; Kepler-Dev
Subject: Re: New Kepler Menus


Dan -

thanks - i know about that one. Laura's redesign has a checkbox menu 
item - click once for on; click again to toggle off - but i have not yet 
had chance to implement it like that.

m



Dan Higgins wrote:
> Hi Matthew (and Laura)
> 
>    In using the new Kepler menu system, I can across a problem. In the 
> old menus (aka Ptolemy menu) there is a menu item named 'Animate 
> Execution' under the 'Debug' menu. Immediately below the 'Animate 
> Execution' is a 'Stop Animating' meny item.
> 
>    'Animate Execution' shows when actors are executing when a workflow 
> runs by 'hilighting' the actor for a use-set period of time (for some 
> Directors). 'Stop Animating' turns off the animation
> 
>    In the new menus, this item has apparently been replaced by the menu 
> item 'Run with Feedback' under the 'Tools' menu. The problem is that 
> there is no 'Stop Feedback' menu item. So once the user starts showing 
> which icon is firing, there is no way to turn off the effect with the 
> new menus!  Rather that having a seperate 'Stop' menu, perhaps the menu 
> should toggle from 'Run with Feedback' to 'Stop Feedback' and back?
> 
>    Incidently. in my opinion, the original menu text of 'Animate 
> Execution' seems more descriptive than 'Run with Feedback'. Feedback 
> seems like a term that can have many meanings and is not very helpful to 
> a new Kepler user.. 'Feedback' could just be some text summary at the 
> end of workflow execution.
> 
> Dan
> 

-- 

---------------------------------------------
Matthew Brooke, Ph.D.
Marine Sciences Research Building, Room #3407
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA  93106-6150
ph: (805) 893-7108   fx: 805-893-8062
brooke at nceas.ucsb.edu
---------------------------------------------



More information about the Kepler-dev mailing list