Pan, Zoom and Transform in SketchBook Express

I was playing with SketchBook Express on my MAC today, and I found the transformation and pan/zoom widgets intriguing.

Transformation Widget
SketchBook Express implements a novel solution for transforming a selected area. Upon selection a widget enables a different type of transformations: move, rotate and scale. The default action is pan, so, If I select, and start dragging right after, the widget will perform a move.

The widget appears when moving the mouse near the selection and it disappears when moving away from it. This is a similar show/hide behavior that Word implements for contextual floating toolbars. I found somewhat annoying Word's permanently hiding the toolbar when I move the mouse too far. Clearly Word tries to guess my intentions, but, as usual, smart behaviors are great if they right 90%, and frustrating otherwise. Luckily SketchBook does not fall into this trap, and it provides a simple close button to explicitly hide of the widget.



While this widget provides an interesting solution for transforming a selection, it does take some time to get used to it. I found myself always hesitating a bit before starting a move. Will I ever adapt?

Pan/Zoom Widget
SketchBook Express implements also a novel solution for Pan and Zoom. Upon press and hold of the SPACE bar the app displays a floating Pan/Zoom widget.

I can manipulate the view until I get when I want, then release the SPACE bar to return to my previous mode. Pan/Zoom is also an explicit mode, but I found the quasi-modal solution the most appealing.



SketchBook Express is free on the MAC. if you find intriguing what I described, try it for yourself!

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Clever yet confusing tab grouping affordance on the MAC's ribbon

On the revised ribbon on the MAC, Microsoft designed a very interesting solution to represent a set of contextual tabs. The Charts tab points to the associated Chart Layout and Format tab, representing the relation among them.



A similar concept is represented in a slightly different way on Windows, which groups the contextual tabs adding a colorized section with label above the contextual tabs.



I found the new solution on the MAC clever and potentially more elegant, but it is currently less obvious then the Windows affordance.
The MAC solution would become much easier to understand if all Charts tabs were using the same purple color. The Charts tab now provide a mixed message to the user. It is visually grouped with the other tabs by using the color green. At the same time it is visually grouped with the purple tabs by using the pointy shape. Confusing.

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Option Tray

In on older version of Evernote they had this interesting Tips tray which opened up in suggestions for using the app. I like the idea, but not necessarily for help information, which become stale as soon as you read them. You don't want to allocate so much real estate to something that becomes irrelevant.

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Hover Menus

This is a new category of context menus, which appears upon hover of elements in the UI.They have the advantages of context menu (they are in context and they don't clutter the UI) without the disadvantage of being us hidden. I have seen them used first on Facebook few years ago and I love them.

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Variety of options for contextual menus

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Undo as an Inverse-Clock

Paper, which is a free sketching app on the iPad, has a lovely implementation of the undo. It was kind of tricky to bring up the undo, but when I figured how, it was just beautiful. When the widget comes up you can go back in time by moving the finger with a rotatory motion. It animates the progressive undo of every stroke. It is like an inverse clock. Brilliant!

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