Radial menu gets in the way

[hajo4]

e.g. when you want to select several points that are close to each other,
the radial menu is covering the next point you want to select.

This is a case where the UI makes it really hard to do a simple task.

It would be nice to have an alternative to fiddling around,
like clicking on different places so the menu is not in the way
for the next point you want.

E.g. an alternative menu (straight dropdown, to the left / right of cursor),
or simple switch off the radial menu, and use keyboard-shortcuts.

[jfirebaugh]

Yeah, I confess to getting pretty annoyed at the radial menu from time to time.

[samanpwbb]

As the designer and early proponent of the thing, I support a redesign. Valid criticisms. @tmcw you were right this time 👯.

So, thoughts on taking over right click? We discussed this idea ages ago and dismissed it, but I think that iD is basically a desktop quality app and this is standard practice for context menus for a reason. More web apps are adopting right click functionality. I just don't see another way to keep the menu out the way when you don't need it. Some sort of click then over over a small icon which pops up a menu would be the closest thing to a right click without an actual right click. Fixed position menus are a slog.

[tmcw]

I think overriding right-click is bad practice on the web, and haven't seen any other sites implementing. What about long-clicking? At least there's a similar analog on mobile browsers. Or we could keep a very unobtrusive '+' or something on single click and only expand the full thing on click on that?

[samanpwbb]

Google maps & nokia's editor both have right click context menus. That said,

Or we could keep a very unobtrusive '+' or something on single click and only expand the full thing on click on that?

worth trying.

[tmcw]

Google MapsGL removes the right-clicking binding afaik/can see

[samanpwbb]

Right click is one of the those mouse-centric interactions that's on it's way out as everything is becoming a touch device. I'm with you.

[hajo4]

Other alternatives I can think of:

• (keyboard-shortcut to) rotate radial menu (e.g. in steps of, say 120 degrees)
• same, but increase its radius so previous covered area is now clear
• same/combined, but triggered when hovering too long over menu-area

[hajo4]

Yet another suggestion:
use the left pane "Selected items" for selecting,
i.e. put checkboxes on all the listed items
(preferably with a better description than "other" :)

That would also come in handy when separating
several lines that share a common point.

[Janjko]

What if we were stubborn with keeping the radial menu. Are there any high tech ways to make it not get in the way?

For example, make just the nodes get over the menu. So if a menu gets over a node, you can still click the node, but it's not so big that you can't click the menu.
And in addition to that, make the menu rotate to make the nodes visible.

[tmcw]

I vote to close this issue. The radial menu has drawbacks but I don't see a viable alternative solidifying on this issue. At this point in iD's development a change to this interaction would be likely be disruptive to documentation and user habits in a way that outweighs the potential benefit.

Anyone else 👍 to close?

[bhousel]

sure we can close it