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I find the tooltip popup thing, which rather immediately appears when I hover above a Task in the Task List, _extremely_ annoying. I suggest that it either is completely removed (as I've never felt it helped me at all), or that I have to point to some very specific part of a task's line to have it appear. Rationale, attempt at explanation: I've now used Mylyn for a while, and I at first thought that I'd get used to that thing - but I just hate it more and more. The problem is that I apparently use the mouse as some kind of visual guide to point down the list when e.g. deciding between all the tasks for which to pick next, and also I click on a task to make it selected - to read it more closely. Or even just point the mouse to the "general area" where I'm focusing: The Task List at all. Basically every time I go looking at the Task List. Then that damn box comes popping up immediately when I rest the mouse pointer about 2 milliseconds anywhere. And it is ONLY annoying. The problem is that it visually hides the next bunch of tasks, and that it causes considerable visual disturbance since it happens pretty much unconditionally whenever the mouse is anywhere within the TaskList - I don't have to initiate anything, either by pointing to some _specific_ part, or by clicking: If I move the mouse "in the vicinity" of the TaskList, this unwanted things come jumping at me. (Contrast this to how the editor work: I have to position the mouse above some specific element of the code for the tooltip-thing to pop up - as long as I hover it "anywhere white", nothing happens.) Also, had it popped up where the mouse is, I could have put the mouse pointer way out to the right, and thereby had at least a slight less annoyance. However, it pops up, X-axis wise, at the same place no matter where the mouse is positioned on the X-axis. This place is the most annoying place for it to appear, as it hides exactly the "most significant bits" of the following tasks.
Please take a look at the discussion on bug 255220. It has the rational for the current placement and behavior of the tooltip. As pointed out on the task I am okay with exposing a preference to disable the Task List tooltip in the UI experiements feature which is available from the incubator update site.
+1 for the preference in regular release. I find the tooltip very annoying as well. It may be useful for some workflows but at the expense of others.
Mik, what are your thoughts on adding a preference to disable Task List tooltips? This is the third request already for adding that.
Well, David Green explained this well enough in that bug 255220 - but I don't want to be forced to work like that. I will NEVER do it like that. I need the "here's everything!!" view of it, having an overview, which goes beyond some kind of teletype line-by-line, "ed-style" interface!! <rant> In general, I feel Mylyn is forcing too much "pre-digested knowledge" down my throat. Although I literally loved the presentation Mik gave about Mylyn on some JavaOne, and the whole "code at the speed of thought" concept, I don't believe every single brain in the universe works optimally at one specific way. You MUST accommodate some variability in preferences! Check out my (WONTFIX'd) Bug 238220, and the follow-up bug 272089. It is clear that Mik has a very clear idea of how all this shall work. He states "We occasionally still bump into the problem of auto focusing being disruptive to new users". I am not anymore a new user, and I STILL NEVER use the focused view, as since I cannot get the overview I crave _in addition_ to the focus, I cannot use it. Switching back and forth does not do it for me. That mentioned popup (Ctrl-shift-alt-rightArrow) is bugged and flawed. Hence I'm never focusing. This is sad, actually. Apple has on their iPhone taken away pretty much ALL variability, instead more or less stating "this is The Way". But a) They most probably have slightly more resources focused and devoted directly on UI research, and probably having access to more brains to evaluate (!), b) You don't use your phone 8 hours a day, intensely, deep down in, and c) EVEN THE IPHONE has some configuration options!! Bottom line: I _hate_ that tooltip, as it completely goes against how I review lists and handle my mouse. Shall I because of Mylyn completely change this way? I will not. This leads me to dislike aspects of Mylyn - apparently because there is a refusal to make things configurable, and the grand idea that there is One Optimal Way for everything. </rant>
Endre: I'm the one that's guilty of consistently pushing an "Avoid Preferences" design idiom for Mylyn that is something along the Apple design guidelines. Some rationale is here: http://wiki.eclipse.org/Mylyn/UI_Design#Avoid_Preferences I think we can afford more variability than Apple does with the iPhone, but it always comes at a price. In this case, I wonder if the cost/benefit of having a preference along the lines of "Use rich tooltips" is justified. Since new apps, like Office 2010, and making even heavier use of tooltips and interactive info popups, and since they are something we've had demand for already, I can see us making more heave use of them (eg, for items that are hyperlinked in the Task Editor). If we do this, we are likely to annoy even more people who prefer the slim tooltip approach. Steffen: Thoughts?
I like the idea of avoiding preferences. But that also comes at a cost: a) The actual implementation cost: It is "expensive", either in monetary ways, or in scarce open source resources, to Get It Right for All Users, b) The "loose the minority cost": If you try to tailor your stuff to the majority of the users, you might alienate the minority. This is probably okay if we're talking about 5%, 10%. If you end up with 30-40% "minority", and even possibly >50%, since you might not have the resources to research that YOU folks are the actual minority, then you are in trouble, IMHO. I feel the same about the bugs I mentioned (which I seriously would love if you took another go at): I am not the only one requesting it (both non-focused and focused views at the same time). However, I take my time to file requests about it, nag about it, try to see ideas and solutions. What about those that just suffer in silence, or simply don't like your tool and don't use it? Seriously, it sounds lame, but I have this idea that if I don't like how something works, it is GUARANTEED that there are others in the same boat: I'm not *that* particular or special in my wants and needs. Regarding this problem: It is not the tooltip per se - at all. I would be sad if I had to preference away ALL the "rich tooltips". I tried to be very specific in my initial description. I like, borderline love, the tooltips in the java editor - BECAUSE THEY DON'T KILL ME. Which is exactly what that tooltip in the task list area does. What about this solution: What if the tooltip doesn't appear until I a) hover above the "activate bullet" (radio button thing), or b) use the arrow keys to navigate in the list? (the latter I still would hate, but I understand that is one of your use cases)
While I agree in principle that too many preferences can be harmful, perhaps this is a case where there are too few preferences? For many of us we spend a good part of our work day using Mylyn (I _live_ in Eclipse and Mylyn). Though Mylyn is carefully designed to support a specific workflow, perhaps in this case it should not be so perscriptive. There are examples of excellent UIs that make use of 'tweaking' preferences. Take for example Mac OS X. It has many preferences to control how the dock should look and function, expose, trackpad, etc. etc. etc. Given that the task list is so integral to how we work, perhaps this is a good case for a simple on/off preference.
perscriptive << should have been prescriptive
Thanks for the input. I have scheduled this bug for the next release since it should be fairly straight forward to implement. The preference will only support disabling on hover tooltips in the Task List. Making tooltip visible by pressing F4 will work regardless of the setting. Endre, would that satisfy your request?
Yes, thanks! That F4 is nice. However, did you find the "hover at the bullet" idea to weird? Because, IMHO, something like that would kinda be "getting both in bag and sack" as we say up here ("have your cake and eat it too"..) (In not-annoying mode you can still get the tooltip "back" without having to switch HID)
I considered the hover over bullet mode that you suggested but I don't find that intuitive since the tooltip shows the full summary so conceptually I expect it to show when hovering over the summary. I have committed the changes that add a new setting on the Tasks preferences page for disabling tooltips. This is still pending review on tomorrow's call but will appear in the next weekly build.
Created attachment 153655 [details] mylyn/context/zip
Just to point it out if it wasn't clear: The "hover over bullet" mode would just be when you had turned the tooltip off by means of the configuration settings. This so that I could still get the tooltip even if I turned them off - without having to employ the keyboard. A "have my cake and eat it too" kind of feature (Turn off what I find super-annoying, but still be able to get the tooltip, if I pointed to some very specific part).
Suggested name for preference: "Show overview popups on hover".
Reopening to address Mik's concern that the setting disables native tooltips on Windows XP/7.
Added hook to enable native tooltips and updated text for preferences.
Thanks for adding the preference, very nice. However after using it for a while I am kind of missing the tooltips :). Often a task summary is too long to fit to the visible area and I came to appreciate Endre's idea of showing the tooltip when mouse is pointing to specific area, may I suggest the task icon itself if possible? There is a workaround of using F4 of course but it interrupts the flow as I am using mouse to work with the task list.
I am afraid that adding a hover hot spot for the tooltip would void the purpose of the preference and still get in the way of users who prefer to disable rich tooltips. How about making the icon clickable, i.e. a single click on the icon will trigger the tooltip equivalent to pressing F4?
I can actually assure you that users wouldn't find this too bad! :-) The only problem is the discoverability, which admittedly would be rather slim (unless you actually explained it using a small string in the preferences) - but the feature would NOT get in the way for anyone. There is a HUGE difference in having the popup annoy you to death simply by swinging your mouse into the task view, and having to point the mouse at a specific 8x8 pixel area - and this difference would be immediately appreciated, in "ah, if I hover over that thing, the popup comes, while it won't anywhere else". This is just too simple and obvious to be problematic in any way. .. although the clicking doesn't sound to bad to me, either.
We have discussed this on the Mylyn call and decided against making any further changes. Having the tooltip show up on hover when the preference is disabled seems counter intuitive and making it show on click would conflict with selections. I would recommend to either enable the setting or to use F4 to make the tooltip visible on demand.
*** Bug 306698 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
