Making circle changes from the hover menu should be less easy

[sincere]

Title:
Making circle changes from the hover menu should be less easy

Area:
entries

Summary:
It is currently too easy to accidentally make circle changes through the hover menu, accidental or otherwise. I propose changing the current <i>two</i> links that require no confirmation before acting to <i>one</i> link that will redirect to the Add to Circle or Manage Subscription page with full text options.

Description:
Several times in the last two weeks alone my mouse has passed, either purposefully or accidentally on the way to clicking something else, over someone's usericon. The hover menu doesn't open until the instant I am attempting to click somewhere else, and now I have clicked on one of the many links in the hover menu. <i>Immediately</i> I have subscribed to someone's journal, unsubscribed from someone's journal, granted someone access to my personal entries, or removed someone's existing access to my personal entries. This simple misclick can result in as many as two email notifications to let someone know that I changed their status -- when I had no intention of doing anything like that.

It's embarrassing to accidentally grant access to someone you're just talking to casually on a community, and even more embarrassing to then go "Uh, sorry, never mind" and take it away again.

I don't see why the hover menu makes this so easy. This requires only a single click and it's just done, but when I do it on the profile page, where I am <i>much</i> less likely to click on those links accidentally, it takes me to a separate page going "Are you sure?" first.

In addition, the hover menu has a lot of text on it, and it appears and disappears very quickly. Once I misclick, I usually have to hover over the icon again 3-4 times to see what I changed, and then to get my mouse to the link to change back again.

My solution to these problems: Replace the "Subscribe/Unsubscribe" and "Grant access/Remove access" links with just one link, which will redirect users to the existing Add to Circle or Manage Subscription pages (depending on their current status in your circle). This both removes the accidental adding problem, and makes it easier to use.


<b>Potential pros:</b>
+ No more accidental circle changes. Big pro for me.
+ Fewer links means less chance for misclicking in general.
+ Users won't have to sort through as much text to find the link they want.
+ Seems more accessible for readers who have reading or clicking difficulty than providing so many options on the tiny, there-and-gone-again hover menu.


<b>Potential cons:</b>
+ Some ease of use removed, requiring an extra page load to change circle status.
+ If there is any accessibility reason for the pile of links and text on the hover menu, that should be taken into account.
+ If you were hoping to meet your future spouse via a misclick granting them access and them falling in love with you while reading your private meanderings, this may reduce the odds of that happening.

Poll #9258 Making circle changes from the hover menu should be less easy

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 69

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
9 (13.0%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
16 (23.2%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
23 (33.3%)

(I have no opinion)
18 (26.1%)

(Other: please comment)
3 (4.3%)

Comments

[marahmarie]

Well, when I get a minute (which might be days from now, but I won't forget) I'll find and link to fu's patch here, because as far as I know, I'm thinking what you're seeing is not the expected behavior, at least not anymore. I just hovered over some userheads (what you're talking about, the tiny little DW silk icons) and my own user icon (what I was talking about, the thing that usually says "Sheep go to heaven" up in the left corner there) and it's two seconds on both - unless I hover on the context menu itself, in which case the menu stays open indefinitely.

[ratcreature]

For me hovering over the icon gives the "username: icon keyword" information.

[montuos]

Dittos ratcreature: Firefox 9.0.1, Kubuntu 10.10, no timeout on hover menu for either icon or userhead; but unlike ratcreature they're the same menu for me.

[marahmarie]

My bad, maybe. I must have been dreaming that I saw fu said she sped up contextual menu hover times on user icons because I can't find any proof of it. I just browsed a few years worth of the Changelog archives and googled like mad but I only came up with three related changes, and of those, fixing z-indexing (positioning) on contextual hover comes the closest to what I thought she had posted, which is still quite far off.

All I know is the behavior when I hovered on user heads and icons used to be exactly the same as ratcreature's and yours until a while ago, then I saw something in Changelog about speeding it up (or I thought I did), then about a week later I started getting the two-second effect (across DW, not just on my own journal and community). I prefer the old behavior (what ratcreature and you are seeing) to the two-second timing; it's too fast now, especially when I'm coding, which involves a lot of right-clicking and viewing source on the very menus that keep flying off on me before I can do anything with them.

As to whether the speed is dependent on browser/OS, I don't know. I'm using Firefox 9 on XP, but the hover thing sped up for me many versions back on Firefox already (version 4 or 5, I think).

[montuos]

I'm not trying to say "your bad"; if you see that behavior, then you see that behavior. I just wanted to attest that what I see is the same behavior as ratcreature, and to document that I have a similar setup in case that's what makes the difference.

I too recall having seen something about work on the hover menu in the not-too-distant past, but I don't recall any of the details. :-/

[marahmarie]

I'm not trying to say "your bad";

Oh, I only meant "my bad" in the sense of "I don't have that link I said I'd fetch for ratcreature", but after almost literally reading parts of the last two years worth of Changelog (which was good, since with what I did find I can finally re-open the Lastpass/DW Support Request I closed last week for lack of the right info) while doing a month-by-month Archive search and doing some pretty involved Google searches, I don't, which makes me feel bad (and makes me think I look like I'm making this up when, in fact, I saw something, I just don't know exactly what, nor exactly when I last saw it).