Deskbar type-ahead filtering

[kallisti5]

Today, if you open the applications menu in deskbar, and press a letter on your keyboard a seemingly random application is opened.

(Example, I open applications, press 't' and Art Paint opens with a flicker of it's menu item)

This doesn't really work well and seems incomplete. Maybe we can sneak a little type-ahead selection in here?

1. Open applications menu
2. Type 'ter' which would highlight the terminal menu item
3. Press enter to open it

The above workflow would be helpful with large lists of applications, while not disrupting the feng-shui of Deskbar.

I'm not sure how possible this is in BMenu's, but it might be possible.

[kallisti5]

We spoke about this a little in IRC.

So, BMenu random chooses a shortcut for each menu item based on the first letter. if multiple things use the first letter the next is used, etc.

This really isn't super useful since BMenu doesn't display this shortcut anywhere. In BeOS and past operating systems, you could hold a modifier to "show" which shortcut was automatically chosen (underline the letter in the menu items). I don't think we have this?

Overall, we could implement typeahead in *all* BMenu's.

1. Begin typing the name of the item
2. Letters get underlined / highlighted as you type
3. Type something that doesn't exist, and the highlight flickers and disappears

[kallisti5]

​https://review.haiku-os.org/c/haiku/+/2284 was raised by X512 as something which makes some related changes.

[bruno]

The arrow keys work now?

[waddlesplash]

We should likely just merge QuickLaunch into the Deskbar.

[nephele]

Why? I personally don't like QuickLaunch at all, for one it opens applications from everywhere, not the deskbar entries, this means i get each application three to four times (because of generated folders in haiku source tree etc), and there is no way to see what my options are before typing.

Honestly I just don't think it is a very good UI, some type ahead filtering like mentioned in this ticket would be a much better solution IMO.

[bitigchi]

In similar implementations, it's possible to add "Ignored" folders and volumes, so it should not matter. It just needs to be implemented.

I don't think merging QuickLaunch as-is is a good idea, I prefer menus (albeit HORRIBLY SLOW, and tortoise drawing speed is horrendous) at the moment because I am so lazy to deal with the horrible UX of the Shortcuts preferences. If it's going to be integrated, it needs to be reworked with its shortcuts and everything.

[nephele]

In similar implementations, it's possible to add "Ignored" folders and volumes, so it should not matter. It just needs to be implemented.

Why? the Whitelist of "everything that explicitly has a deskbar entry" way works much better, let's just keep that the way it is.

[bitigchi]

That works, but why limit it to Deskbar entries? It's much better to employ a general file searcher, greatly integrated with the attributes search and everything. Like Spotlight.

[nephele]

This ticket is about deskbar

[humdinger]

See also #6496.

IMO type-ahead filtering would be better than type-ahead selecting, because if the user moved the mouse, the selection would be lost.

[dhruvag2k]

I am willing to get started on this. What I plan on doing is, when one hovers cursor onto the "applications" and then starts typing something, it then starts to shortlist the apps in that menu and highlight the text that has been typed. Something similar is already being done in the folder explorer so I will refer to the code from there and see if I am able to copy paste bits into the App menu and get it working.

[kallisti5]

dhruvag2k let us know your progress on this. I think it would be a good sized project without getting too technical.

Be prepared however for a lot of code review... Deskbar is critical to our user experience so a lot of people will have a lot of commentary in the review request on review.haiku-os.org :-)

Ideally, I think it shouldn't be obvious you can even do it(we don't need a text box to collect what letters you type... just do it how tracker does it with folders as you said)

[bitigchi]

FYI, there are several WIP patches that are related to menus:

​https://review.haiku-os.org/q/status:open+-is:wip+menu