Re: GIMP and Photoshop user interfaces (was: Re: Distros specifically designed for children)

On Wed, 4 Jun 2025 00:15:36 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

I fired up GIMP 3 and had a quick look round at several dialogs. I
simply could not find any examples of what you’re talking about.

I'll be damned - looks like they *finally* started paying attention to
this in v.3. Only took 'em 27 years!

It does still take advantage of Fitts’ Law though, doesn’t it. Is
there some other point to context menus?

Fitts' Law is exactly what makes such a thing comically redundant: the
main menu is *already there,* right within mouse-flick range. Having a
duplicate of it pop up when you right-click in the document area would
be pointless even if it *weren't* so extensive as to be unwieldy when
hanging off the mouse pointer.

The true use of context menus is right there in the name: they should
provide a contextually-appropriate selection of actions based on the
thing clicked on (e.g. vertices of a polygonal-select outline) and/or
the current mode (alternate operations for the current tool.) If you're
not gonna bother doing that, it'd be more sensible to skip the menu
altogether and just use right-click as a fixed alternate function for
the current tool or somesuch.