Wednesday 7 May 2014

Windows 8 Radial Menu - Efficient User Interface Control

Radial menu is really a user interface control that organizes available commands like a circle. In radial menus, item selection is dependent on direction and muscular memory while common drop down list menus provide distance and visual memory. They may be used on all devices and with any kind of interface: mouse or touch-based. Why use radial menu Modern devices often become compact and light. This couldn't but affect interface from the installed software when more screen space ought to be left for active work and content material area.

Menus shouldn't overload interface and really should appear only when required. In this case, radial menu is a convenient solution because it can make complex hierarchical menu (that can occasionally hide half of the screen) end up being compact circle with intuitive gesture-based routing. The list of advantages looks such as this:

-On demand context menu appearing only whenever necessary;

-Less distance to any menus item;

-Less selection errors;

-Increased efficiency of users;

Some history Idea of radial menu is very old. History of this menu design began in 1969, just imagine, a lot more than 40 years ago. In 1986, the idea of context menu, arranging context commands like a pie where angle and radius are utilized to pass commands, was formed. Nowadays radial menus are extremely popular in visual games where it's vitally important to be fast with command selection since it hardly influences person progress in the overall game. Growing popularity of touch-based devices as well as interfaces made vendors of business software return to the idea of radial menu.

Actually Microsoft corp. presented radial menu within its Office 2013 application OneNote. How Perpetual UI Controls for Windows 8 might help Since Windows 8 is the most hardly promoted operating-system for both desktop and tablets. The main the first is -content first-. The only obstacle for software designers is that radial menu is not contained in the standard UI package. Here Perpetuum UI Controls might help. The product offers completely customizable XAML Radial Menu control which will seamlessly integrate into your application.

Perpetuum radial menus can look absolutely like OneNote's such as animations. You can add any elements for this menu from common icons to sliders as well as color picker. The product also offers 9 XAML interface controls such as color picker, period picker, rating control, text box, basic menu, date picker, numeric box, flyout, as well as expander.    
How to arrange effective radial menus Download Perpetuum UI Controls for Home windows 8 and install it on your pc. Radial menu sample offers some pre-set instructions, so you can use some of these. Radial menu usually offers no more than 8 menu items for a passing fancy level. This limitation is determined by user-friendliness from the interface and the necessity to provide quite big menu items for touch-based devices as touch interface isn't that accurate as mouse.

That is why radial menu ought to be carefully thought over. You will have to group menu items and locate these groups about the higher level. Submenus should also be clear and laconic and simultaneously offer all necessary options. Radial menu control promises to become extremely popular in all types of applications including business ones because of its effectiveness and low selection errors.