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the three-pane questionSoftware that deals with information in general, and with email (or RSS) in particular, has, over the past few years used a relatively standard three-pane interface, as shown in the following sketch:   The "all horizontal" mode is better IMO, since it gives you more space to view information (which is typically "long" rather than "wide"). It also makes it easier to follow the progression of "contained" information: as you move along the x axis to the left, you increase specificity--this consistency can then help in other areas of the UI. Apple for example has used the all-horizontal paradigm for one of the settings of the file browser in the Finder, and it's much, much better than the alternative. Simple and easy to use. The all-horizontal mode has one drawback: You need a bare minimum of 800x600 to be able to use it well. (or maybe 1024x768?). This limits it mass appeal a bit, but it's probably safe to say that people that use 640x480 are probably late adopters, and not likely to be trying out new software anyway. So I'm considering making the horizontal view the default for the next beta of cactus, and it might even be useful to allow in-place editing of some elements (say, contact or task information). Comments? Categories: clevercactusPosted by diego on June 30 2003 at 1:47 PM Comments (please see the comments & trackback policy).
The horizontal thing isn't necessarily bad, but I think you'd be better off looking to *other* examples besides Microsoft's hackish UI.
:-) -Russ Posted by: Russ at June 30, 2003 2:07 PM
I just downloaded FeedDemon to see how it would work and I decided *instantly* that I don't like reading news from only the right half of my screen. After what, 5 or 6 years of reading mail in the old format (bottom, center), I can't see myself switching to horizontal view. -Russ Posted by: Russ at June 30, 2003 2:30 PMI'll be brief ... the wider the better ! I personally like to have several more columns in the "2nd level nav. pane" than the default, and for that I need more horizontal screen real-estate. Also, the "content view pane" can accommodate "more" in less rows, making room in the "2nd level" for more rows as well ... and you can always move the splitter bar between these two as needed, which makes more practical sense to me than having to deal with two vertical splitters. Anyway, just my 5 cents. If made the default, I suspect many will revert to the former layout, just as Russ said. Bruno Posted by: Bruno at June 30, 2003 2:57 PMI agree, but at this point I am so hungry for an update I'd settle for diagonal. Posted by: Greg. Greulich at June 30, 2003 3:28 PMI can't remember exactly what screen res I use on my laptop (I think it's 1024x768), but to my mind there just isn't enough space to lose another column's-worth from the content. Actually, just having a gander at Outlook Express that I'm using here (installing CleverCactus is, unfortunately, so far only on my todo list), the information in the second pane is quite wide itself (from, subject, date, etc.) although I guess you could condense it for viewing in a column. I expect I'd stick with the existing layout as it's *much* easier to read when you only have to scroll down. If any content is too wide it becomes a real pain to read, unless it's word-wrapped, but that would have to be rather clever to cope with quoting in plain text emails. Adrian. Posted by: Adrian McEwen at June 30, 2003 3:54 PMThree panes suck. Sorry. You really, really need to check out the UMD Piccolo library. Then stop thinking in terms of the conventional boundaries for UI. Move away from Swing entirely. Posted by: Ross Judson at June 30, 2003 7:41 PMPiccolo, yes, great library, although I'm not sure if it is the right solution for this type of application. I don't see myself zooming in and out through my email ! I know it sounds cool, and I might be getting old, but I don't see how could it be applied practically. Anyway, I'd love to see a creative and practical use of it, and if someone can pull it out, that is our friend Diego ! Posted by: Bruno at June 30, 2003 9:30 PMI kind of like the three pane thing - keep in mind you're typically juggling your browser (which is where I mainly like to read news, blog and trackback from). Also my tv is in 16:9 format and I imagine more monitors will be shaped that way going forward as well. This is just the chance you need to justify the purchase of a 17" powerbook no? Posted by: mal at June 30, 2003 9:49 PMI haven't used a "horizontal layout" program yet, so my only experience so far is with screenshots, but I don't think it will be so useful for email (and news). The new outlook screen-shots look cool, but 2nd and 3rd pane are too narrow to be useful. The 3rd pane (the content view pane) will force you to do a lot of vertical scrolling to read a long text (and will make a mess with complex html emails, that may already include 3 columns inside themself). The central pane can only accomodate a few columns, and I don't see it viable to show a threaded view of emails in that kind of space. About screen resolution, I would put it in 1024x768 MINIMUM (and 17" monitor). I don't think it can be usefull in 800x600, unless you settle for a very small font size. Posted by: Ricardo at July 1, 2003 3:04 AMI think the limiting factor is people's hardware. I really like horizontal layouts, even adopted one for a project that looked similar to [1] - for a project within a company where everyone had 1280x960 or above. I also thought about adopting a horizontal layout for a web based directory, and though it works fine on higher resolutions, it's a mess on 1024x768 and similar viewholes. Within applications, I think a layout that has only vertical elements arranged horizontally is easier to grasp and faster to handle than the well-known approach with mixed horizontal and vertical elements. So if you can afford the effort, why don't make a switchable layout where the user can choose depending on his preference (and screen resolution)? For some nifty Java GUI, check [2], showing how to build powerful, beautiful, intuitive and RDF-based interfaces with Adenine [3], something I think they specifially wrote for the Haystack project (now let's talk about having resources... ;-) By the way, Haystack is a very interesting project, they are on it for quite a while now and came up with some good papers on RDF and the Pendantic Web in [4] [1] http://www.eugenebelyaev.com/images/beggregator.jpg In my case my dislike of horizontal layouts has nothing to do with hardware limitations. Look at the first screenshot provided in Haiko's entry [1], 50% of the available horizontal space is dedicated to the 1st and 2nd panes, which carry only accessory/secondary information, and at this it even falls short, as relevant message-related information is not included in the 2nd pane (even recurring to a second row per item as we can see in the screenshot). The 3rd and "main" pane, which is no doubt the center of attention of the application, is shifted to the extreme right, instead of being as centered as possible for comfortable viewing. Posted by: Bruno at July 1, 2003 1:35 PMThanks everyone for the comments! Quite useful discussion. I'll think about all of the arguments for a bit and comment further in a few days. And Greg: diagonal! LOL. Just hold on a little longer; the next version is coming. :) Posted by: Diego at July 1, 2003 6:24 PMThe problem of (mis-)use of screen real-estate is one shared by both layout models (the original left-top-center, and the proposed left-middle-right). The problem is cognitive, I guess: you start by scanning for a data item at level k, click on it and activate level k+1. Now level k should be put in a display state that only gives context but not the entire selection space, until revisited. As I see it, current drill-down interfaces either retain full context, wasting display *and* cognitive space, or completely replace one level with the next (perhaps using nifty zoom-in and zoom-out animations) and in the process hiding *all* context information. An example of the latter may be the Windows Explorer or Mac OS X's Finder (both in single-window mode). The only context present is in the address bar, or in the title pull-down: tiny in one case, hidden in the other (or perhaps in both; Explorer has to be specifically configured to display addresses). Perhaps a good compromise is the tree view; however, it has the disadvantage of remembering too much state. Matías. Posted by: Matías Giovannini at July 8, 2003 5:34 PMI'm going to throw one more wrench in here, which may or may not apply to usage by anyone here, but I think is a consideration in this debate... All the screen shots here (and in general, standard "windows user" behavior) are running full screen. While the 3 column interface doesn't present a HARDWARE problem for me perse (my Powerbook runs @ 1280x854), I would never DREAM of giving any kind of mail/rss/other-info-viewing app my full screen. I value "transparency" of my viewing area, often referring back to other kinds of documents from my email program, or vice versa, if not actually referring to 3 or 4 windows at once. In addition, I use screen real estate as the "ultimate app switcher", flipping back to windows that are strategically within reach during a lot of my "workflows". I know that this is a largely a platform specific way to work, and that most, if not all, of your users probably work full screen. But there ARE scenarios and use cases beyond "resistance to change" or "hardware limitations" that would render this "new" interface concept less useful. In addition, I do tend to agree with those who criticize the information design aspects of it- that your MAIN CONTENT is moved from a central location to an off center (and potentially narrower) space may add "usability" at the cost of "readability". just my $.05... Posted by: brendon at July 13, 2003 9:52 PMA while back, Agent started offering both layouts; I tried the all-horizontal approach for about five minutes before going back ... it works for the first read [going L-R], but for consistent use, one tends to block out the nav areas and dive right into the content ... and that's one thing you have to consider. Posted by: Geof at July 13, 2003 10:28 PMThree pane horizontal interface with context specific zooming is even better. ie, the pane you are working on zooms up and the remaining panes shrink. Something like this http://www.samuelwan.com/downloads/com.samuelwan.eidt/fisheyemenu/FisheyeMenuDemo.html but horizontal. Posted by: Viswanath Gondi at July 14, 2003 7:34 AMI've been using the MS Outlook 2003 beta & FeedDemon, and I'm learning to love the all-horizontal layout. So, now that I'm adjusting my Outlook habits, I've found something else that is really irritating... URLs. Outlook has IE built in -- you can view web pages by entering addresses in the web toolbar. However, when I receive an email with a URL, and click that URL, it opens a new IE browser, instead of inside Outlook. Ideally, I'd like to click on a message, follow the URL in Outlook, and then be able to go click on another message... I want my Outlook to work like FeedDemon. Any Ideas? (BTW, kudos to Nick on FeedDemon, it's coming along nicely) Posted by: Nedward at July 15, 2003 5:10 PMCopyright © Diego Doval 2002-2007.
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