Dreamwidth Suggestions

Description:
The contextual popup has several subtle issues, because it's triggered by hovering over something, and closed by moving your mouse off of it:

* you can trigger it accidentally by hovering over an icon or userhead while reading a comment -- the unexpected animation can be distracting, or the box might cover up content you want to read

* it fades out after a few seconds: this may be too short for people with fine motor control issues. Conversely, it may be too long for someone who has accidentally triggered the thing and just wants it to go away!

* no way to trigger it by keyboard; no way to indicate that there's anything even like this functionality to keyboard-only users



I suggest that hovering over an icon or userhead should only show a small image within the icon or userhead. This can be clicked to open the contextutual popup menu.

Pros:
* less chance of unexpected behavior and animation
* less chance of accidentally covering up the text you're reading
* more control over how you interact with the site
* it may be possible to make this keyboard friendly, by also adding the clickable trigger when someone focuses on an icon or userhead.

cons:
* adds an extra click for people who are used to the old behavior of the contextual popup showing on hover
* might not be obvious how to open the contextual popup / may not be obvious what the button does
* unexpected animation still there, just a lot subtler
* the small image overlaying the userhead will mean that you can no longer click directly on the userhead to go to that user's profile; however the link is still in the contextual popup menu (see ETA below, which may make this less of an issue)
* the small image overlaying the icon *may* make it harder to click directly on the icon to go to that user's icon page; however that link can be added to the contextual popup menu

Here's a screenshot of how it looks now, where the contextual popup shows up when you hover right over the icon.
http://afunamatata.com/dreamwidth/journal/2011/08/contextual-hover.png

Here's a quick and dirty mockup of how the extra clickable link might work:

When you hover over an icon: http://afunamatata.com/dreamwidth/journal/2011/08/icon-on-hover.png
When you click on the trigger: http://afunamatata.com/dreamwidth/journal/2011/08/icon-on-click.png

When you hover over a userhead (see ETA below for a revised version)): http://afunamatata.com/dreamwidth/journal/2011/08/userhead-on-hover.png
When you click on the trigger: http://afunamatata.com/dreamwidth/journal/2011/08/userhead-on-click.png

Mockups were made in less than ten minutes, so please assume that fiddly bits like where the trigger overlays text in the contextual popup can be fixed (and will be!)