Browse mode vs. edit mode

[PaulWeiss@…]

I do think, however, that there's a pretty clear cognitive difference between browsing an object and editing it, even if the two operations follow each other quickly in short chunks. A difference in the semantics of gestures will be preserved by the difference in the intent of the activity at a given moment. My problem with (for instance) the strategy of the two-fingered drag which has been adopted is that if contact has only been made with one finger, an arc may be created between two random nodes. If the graph is complex, and its topology is not already internalized, it may be impossible to figure out just what one might have connected up once the layout has been redone. In contrast, if my objective is to move the graph, not to draw an arc, I'd be perfectly happy to indicate to the program that I'm in "browse mode," not "edit mode," as long as that's cheap to do, in terms of cognitive load. I don't want to ever accidentally edit something when my intent is to browse it. [PaulWeiss?]

I agree with Paul, and think an Edit button is the way to go. It certainly has great precedent among the existing Apple iPhone apps. [instaviz-2009b]

Moving around the screen becomes progressively harder as your diagrams become more developed. In theory, the touchscreen lets you pan around the diagram by using two fingers, so you can keep inserting more shapes and linkages as you go. In practice, even with zooming functions, using two fingers means lots of mistaken actions from selecting the wrong node to deleting shapes you just worked on. [gadgetpolis.com]

Better switching between dragging and drawing. Still too easy to select or delete a node when trying to pan over the diagram [gadgepolis]

[glenlow]

(In [138]) Added Edit mode, for creating nodes and edges and editing attributes, versus Browse mode for scrolling and zooming (fix #87, #88).