popup gesture navigator

Didn't find this mentioned before:

When I click down the right mouse button it would be very helpfull to see (as long as mouse isn't moving) a navigation icon/graphic of the most common currently active gesture commands. About like that:

....................copy
.....................|
............prev---- | ----next
................top ||| max
...................\|||/
......back-----------o--------------forward
.................../|||\
................min ||| bottom
............stop---- | ----go
.....................|
...................paste

(difficult to align that textgraphic). I hope you can get the idea. That would help remind commands in cases where different applications use different commands on same gestures.

maxim

I may refine my request:

I would propose that the graphic mentioned above could be the cursor shape itself. It changes during the action, and changes back at the end of the action (resp.: right mouse down - right mouse up).

To allow the user to define his own cursor shape graphics, every application stores, additionally to the gestures, a reference to a user defined graphic icon that contains his cursor shape for that application.

How such a info cursor could look like could be seen here:
[url=http://www.nefkom.net/z-bau/celestia/graphics/StrokeIt-Cursor.png]http://www.nefkom.net/z-bau/celestia/graphics/StrokeIt-Cursor.png[/url]

What happens when you have more complex gestures?

Well,
the info cursor should only act as a reminder for the most common gestures, where the same gestures differ in meaning from application to application.

Because it is only a graphic icon the user defines himself, he can decide if he wants/is-able-to create a more complex graphic that contains more simultaneous information without puzzling the user. Good designs then could act as template for other users to be copied.

maxim

I am afraid that so many letters on the screen may be annoying, since they look so big.

Since I use StrokeIt so heavily that I draw hundreds of strokes a day. The most frequently used guestures should be remembered, after stroking for several times. And the pop-up message might be distractible when you are concentrated at your work and unconsciously drawing your guestures.

I'm sure when used for quite a long time you won't need that reminder anymore - so a checkbox in the settings to switch this feature on/off should be part of an implementation. Another approach may be, that as long as the user doesn't define a cursor shape for a certain application, nothing happens.

On the other hand, when you add a new application to StrokeIt, you may be puzzled in the first time of what gestures lauches what command - so it will be helpfull in this case.

For the size and the text: It would be up to the user what he want's to see in his info cursor. The linked example above was just a 5 min work with ms-paint and small fonts set to 7 pt to illustrate the idea - and it showed quite small on my 19" display. I'm sure one can do a much better job with some more effort.

maxim