Ideas for alternative context menu layouts

Question

I'm trying to, find / come up with, a cool alternative to the old trusty rectangle-list-o-buttons context menu. I have seen some suggesting laying the item out circles in a circle, and they call it a pie-menu. And as you click a circle, it expands to have items around it etc. (http://www.emphess.net/2008/05/04/a-menukiller-control-draft/)

My goal is to be able to pack a huge amount of GUI onto the context menu, without it seeming like a monster popping up every time you right click.

Has anyone ever seen/used a non-standard context menu they really liked? I'm thinking there might be some great examples from games.

Answer 1

This is more a warning than an answer, I'll just post it here because it's too big to fit in a comment.

Be careful with non-standard UIs. For a game, you probably have a bit more leeway.. but check out this article (item 3, specifically) from 1999: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990530.html

The other warning I'll put out is be careful about putting too much in the context menu.

1. It is supposed to be context-sensitive. If you right-click on something, you expect actions for that item you're clicking on, and not a ton of other stuff.
2. I hate the fact that Macs don't have right-click by default, but I do actually agree with the supposed original intention (I can't find a reference now, unfortunately): that right-clicking should be a secondary way of accessing items. There should always be another more obvious way of accessing functions (even if it takes longer). Right-click is a shortcut for power users, not the primary mechanism.

It would be helpful to know how many different options you have, and what kind of nesting you can have (eg, is it 20 commands, each 2 or 3 categories deep with 3 or 4 top-level categories? Or is it 400 commands, with 3 top-level categories?).

I'd also suggest, depending on how many, that you try to solve this a different way: don't look for the UI to fit, but consider how you can re-factor your requirements so an extensive UI for hundreds (?) of commands is not needed.

Answer 2

In Crysis, there is a right-click pie-type menu, but when you invoke it, you are selecting one of 3 or 4 options : but there is no cursor - you move the mouse in the direction of the item you want, it highlights, and then you let go of the click. This is a very fast way to select items, hard to mess up, and reasonably intuitive.

You could extend this with the idea you posted, where when you select an option it keeps drilling down to more pie menus, until you get the option you want. If it's actually a non-game app, you may want to not require the right button be held down, but still removing the cursor so only the menu items can be selected may be quite helpful.