Does anyone remember the old fashioned start menu that would expand to the right as you hovered over things?
Have you ever right clicked inside a folder and seen the menu that pops up that says New?
Have you ever wanted to do one thing followed by another on your computer? And queue up things for your computer to do. Such as queuing a long running task followed by a shutdown. Perhaps resizing a video and uploading it.
Here's an idea how to do that. You can right click and hover over the operation you want to complete and this menu expands to include new operations you can do after the current one.
Here's how a menu could expand out:
Download > Rename file > Move file > Open file > Install software > Install location > Open application > New document > View plugins
The computer would automatically wait until the previous item is finished before executing before moving onto the next one.-- chronological, Feb 17 2020 GUI Thunking (my name for this) https://github.com/samsquire/gui-thunksAn example menu [chronological, Feb 17 2020] Graphical example https://github.com/...thunks.png?raw=trueExample from GUI Thunking page [chronological, Feb 17 2020] Example sliding menu https://jsfiddle.net/h7ue4wgn/Buggy sliding menu (Right click white space bottom right) [chronological, Feb 18 2020] Why so GUI? Use Perl.-- Voice, Feb 17 2020 Shell scripts run in the background could do this.
A bit of time needed to code each script, but it could be done as a platform-independent downloadable library, user-supported.
First Linux distro to implement this wins a prize.-- 8th of 7, Feb 17 2020 Either the menus are early in the archive inside software.tgz or software.exe.
Or you have a secondary download convention like (menu.software.tgz) whereby menu.software.tgz contains all the menu items to produce queueable menus for.
There would have to be some interface from the queueing system to software to instruct the downloaded software what to do next.-- chronological, Feb 17 2020 What about a cheap-and-cheerful VB-like script builder using mostly pulldown menus, that either spits out shell script or generates an editable text interpreted macro ?-- 8th of 7, Feb 17 2020 Slightly unrelated, but I've long suspected that AI won't make real advances until its understanding is mostly visual, like humans.-- 4and20, Feb 17 2020 Hang on a moment. If I understand this idea, it is a way to queue tasks so that you can go away and do something useful while they all happen automatically.
Dear gods - have you people never heard of tea? Ever since the industrial revolution, tasks have been adapted such that they involve a 12-18 minute wait. It may be the time needed for the boiler to come up to temperature, the time needed for the glue to set, or the time needed for new components to be delivered from the warehouse, but it is ALWAYS 12-18 minutes. This is, not coincidentally, the time it takes to drink one cup of tea and eat 3 biscuits.
This task-scheduling idea would completely destroy the tea- break. You queue everything up, press GO, and then suddenly you have two hours during which you're expected to look busy. This is an absolute bloody disaster.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 17 2020 It's a geek thing, [MB]; we don't expect you to understand.
<Sigh/>
OK ... we will try to explain.
First case: Mk. I Human.
do {
Start task taking 15 minutes;
Make and consume tea and biscuits;
}
until (time_now == HOME);
return (HOME);
Now, for the Mk. II Geek (Version 3.86.16 release 4.4 issue 2F *Beta)
do
{
reboot server;
slurp coffee;
set up compile task on dev machine;
start download task;
check emails;
slurp more coffee;
kick off batch task on rebooted server;
grab coffee mug, rush to kitchen, find coffee supply exhausted, start fresh brew, dash to bathroom, return to kitchen, pour coffee, rush back to see if compile task has completed, invoke linker script;
look at emails;
load linked code into debug environment;
start another batch task;
until (query (security_guard) == "AIN'T YOU GOT NO BLEEDIN' 'OME TO GO TO ?");
return (VOID);-- 8th of 7, Feb 17 2020 Well, I'm glad at least that the geek waited until he got home to void.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 17 2020 MaxwellBuchanan, another way to look at it is this
Boss: Why aren't you doing anything?
You: I queued every thing up for the rest of the day. I just need to monitor it. I'm going to have some tea.-- chronological, Feb 18 2020 So programing by joe and jane public by tiling their known menu selections together with input prompts where necessary?
I believe it will more be like the ability of the computer to parse joe and jane's less precise verbal or text ask, by looking at thousands of previous use data sets, and generating the needed running script.-- wjt, Feb 18 2020 Why was I fishboned?
I've created an example sliding menu, see link-- chronological, Feb 18 2020 I'm going to re-write the idea to try make it more compact. Here's the original idea text:
Now imagine you have a long running operation such as a hefty Download of an installer (such as the Android SDK), followed by an expensive task you want to run on the file, such as an installation, move the file somewhere, reupload elsewhere, or a resize a video or change the video in some way.
The menu expands with what you can do with the content once it has been finished - before it has finished! You right click on the file in the browser:
A menu pops out and says Download file. You hover over download file and all the following slide out:
Rename file Move file Install file
You hover over Move file and while the menu is still visible, a widget appears that lets you specify where to move the file to once its finished downloading. The menu has not disappeared and the file is being downloaded in the background. Once you select where the file should move to, another menu pops out and it contains
Rename file Install file
You hover over install file, and a wizard appears next to the menu, you're asked a few questions about where to install the file and other questions from the installer (before the download has finished). At the same time the wizard has popped out, another menu has popped out to the right of the wizard and it says
> New document
> Open file
You click New document and the following menu pops out:
> Install extensions
Now an addon browser for the software you haven't even finished downloading pops out.
I imagine this would be really useful on the command line when you run an expensive operation such as bringing up servers in AWS with Terraform. I want to queue running Ansible against machines as soon as the machines have come up (I use a tool I programmed to do this) but I want to be able to queue things in general.
Download menus from the internet to queue things.-- chronological, Feb 19 2020 // Why was I fishboned? //
Huh ? Wasn't us ... we were busy debugging some J++ ...
<Queues croissant for [chron]'s idea &/>-- 8th of 7, Feb 19 2020 So it's a chronological GUI?-- pashute, Feb 20 2020 random, halfbakery