Leaf menus: Linear menus with stroke shortcuts for small handheld devices

Abstract

This paper presents Leaf menu, a new type of contextual linear menu that supports curved gesture shortcuts. By providing an alternative to keyboard shortcuts, the Leaf menus can be used for the selection of commands on tabletops, but its key benefit is its adequacy to small handheld touchscreen devices (PDA, Smartphone). Indeed Leaf menus define a compact and known layout inherited from linear menus, they support precise finger interaction, they manage occlusion and they can be used in close proximity to the screen borders. Moreover, by providing stroke shortcuts, they favour the selection of frequent commands in expert mode and make eye-free selection possible. © 2009 Springer.