We at Profluo.com propose two usability improvements for the modeler that will remove two palette items:
navigation by mouse (the little hand) - could be replaced by holding SPACE + left mouse button drag & drop (and change the mouse cursor to the little hand as a visual aid during the drag & drop movement).
selection of items (the marquee symbol) - could be replaced by long holding left mouse button (and could change the cursor to the marquee symbol as a visual aid during the drag & drop movement)
These two are already existing, relatively widespread, UI paradigms and most likely will not result in a lot of user confusion, while de-cluttering a bit the palette.
Thanks for your feedback. We continuously try to improve here and have to take both expert users and starters into account for the improvements we carry out.
Especially for starters we added the palette entries for hand and lasso tool. Why? Because for many people it is not obvious that there are shortcuts + modifiers (i.e. you can trigger the lasso via SHIFT + Drag, too). Because of that I think we cannot get rid of the items on the palette any time soon.
Regarding your suggestions:
navigation by mouse (the little hand) - could be replaced by holding SPACE + left mouse button drag & drop (and change the mouse cursor to the little hand as a visual aid during the drag & drop movement).
This is something we thought about for a longer time already. It is a pattern known from Gimp, Inkscape and other editing applications. Unfortunately again, only expert users know about this.
I added an issue for this. Please add your suggestions / comments there.
selection of items (the marquee symbol) - could be replaced by long holding left mouse button (and could change the cursor to the marquee symbol as a visual aid during the drag & drop movement)
Long holding left mouse button slows down users that would like to get work done fast. These users get absolutely annoyed if they need to wait for something to happen. Even on mobile not everyone likes it (cf. fastclick).
I agree that the proposed interface changes are suitable only for experienced users. We probably erred on the side of assuming most Camunda Modeler users would be quite advanced
Re: lasso tool - if the argumentation is for users who like to work fast, we think toggling buttons interrupt the usual mouse trajectory when modelling, much more than long-holding. But we agree that SHIFT+Drag should be a better option for the lasso tool.
