Upgrade StoragePosition the color selector near the mouse pointer when highlighting
Hi everyone, I have a suggestion that can potentially improve Zotero's usability.
When I highlight a piece of text, a pop-up with a color selection widget is shown. The position of the pop-up varies; I noticed that it is shown either in the center of the screen, or in the middle of the selection - when the selection is short, that's fine; but when the selected fragment is long - the color selector can be quite far from the current position of the mouse.
This means that one would have to point the mouse to another location, and the travel distance will be long. Considering Fitts' law - a long travel distance and the small size of each color cell constitute a relatively difficult target.
I think it would be better if the color selection widget were shown at the location of the mouse pointer - this way the travel distance would be much smaller. Another benefit is that the locus of the user's attention is already there (because moments ago they were deciding where to stop dragging the mouse), so it doesn't force them to reposition their gaze.
A complementary enhancement would be to give an alternative way to choose the color, instead of clicking it with a mouse, use a key. For example each color could be labeled from 1 to 9, and the user could press the number directly. This would remove the cost of an extra manipulation with the mouse (and the cost of a "keying" operation is much smaller than that of "pointing", in the KLM [keystroke-level model, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystroke-level_model]).
When I highlight a piece of text, a pop-up with a color selection widget is shown. The position of the pop-up varies; I noticed that it is shown either in the center of the screen, or in the middle of the selection - when the selection is short, that's fine; but when the selected fragment is long - the color selector can be quite far from the current position of the mouse.
This means that one would have to point the mouse to another location, and the travel distance will be long. Considering Fitts' law - a long travel distance and the small size of each color cell constitute a relatively difficult target.
I think it would be better if the color selection widget were shown at the location of the mouse pointer - this way the travel distance would be much smaller. Another benefit is that the locus of the user's attention is already there (because moments ago they were deciding where to stop dragging the mouse), so it doesn't force them to reposition their gaze.
A complementary enhancement would be to give an alternative way to choose the color, instead of clicking it with a mouse, use a key. For example each color could be labeled from 1 to 9, and the user could press the number directly. This would remove the cost of an extra manipulation with the mouse (and the cost of a "keying" operation is much smaller than that of "pointing", in the KLM [keystroke-level model, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystroke-level_model]).
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QgLmA9pFaSV3Fug9FUR0PbmMvdQeiPPv/view?usp=drive_link
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vXl53mhTgsWW9HTPplmuZdVsyuD8OkGr/view?usp=drive_link
Note that the issue is more prominent when you select right-to-left, i.e., drag mouse from the end of the sentence to the beginning. The color selection pop-up doesn't seem to be tied to the position of the mouse pointer, but to the selection itself.