Improving cascading menu selections with adaptive activation areas

Abstract

Cascading menus are some of the most commonly-used widgets in graphical user interface (GUI) systems. Depending upon the number of menu items and the number of submenus, cascading menus may have elongated paths with corner steering, which causes navigation and selection errors. To resolve the corner steering problem, most current cascading menus implement an explicit time delay between the cursor entering or leaving a parent menu item and posting/unposting the associated menu. The objective of this thesis is to design, implement, and evaluate Adaptive Activation-Area Menus (AAMUs), a new technique to improve cascading menu performance by resolving the corner steering and time delay problems. This technique creates a localized triangular activation area between the menu and the child submenu that helps in quick diagonal navigation without imposing any time delay. The AAMU technique improves item selection in comparison to existing techniques and also creates a better user experience with cascading menus.

Citation

Erum Tanvir. 2010. Improving Cascading Menu Selections with Adaptive Activation Area. Master's thesis, University of Manitoba.

Bibtext Entry

@MASTERSTHESIS { ErumMScThesis,
    AUTHOR = { Erum Tanvir },
    TITLE = { Improving Cascading Menu Selections with Adaptive Activation Area },
    SCHOOL = { University of Manitoba },
    ADDRESS = { Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada },
    YEAR = { 2010 },
}