Okay, let’s talk about how I made this “magic spot menu” thing happen.
So, I started messing around with this idea of a menu that only pops up when you really need it. You know, like when you’re zoomed into some specific part of a diagram and you need a quick way to do stuff without going all the way back to the main menu.
First, I needed to figure out when to show the menu. I played around with different triggers, and finally settled on showing it when the user clicks on a specific spot on the diagram—like a special “magic” spot, get it? I had to make sure it was not just any click. So I set up a way to detect if a click was inside the bounds of this spot.
Then came the fun part: designing the menu itself. I wanted it to be simple but also powerful. I added buttons for the most common actions I thought users would need in that context, like “edit details,” “add note,” or “connect.” It was important to me that the options made sense, and the user was not just bombarded with every option. I listed the options I thought were necessary for this test.
- Edit details
- Add Note
- Connect
Next up, I had to make sure the menu didn’t just pop up anywhere. I wrote some code to position it right next to where the user clicked, but also make sure it didn’t go off-screen. Kind of tricky, but I managed to get it working pretty smoothly after a few tries.
I also wanted the menu to disappear when you clicked away from it, because, let’s be real, no one wants a menu sticking around when they don’t need it. So, I added a little bit of code to detect clicks outside the menu and poof, it’s gone.
Test Drive
After all that, I gave it a test run. I clicked around, tried out the different options, and you know what? It felt pretty darn good. It was like the diagram could read my mind, showing me the options I needed right when I needed them.
Of course, it’s not perfect yet. There are still a few things I want to tweak, like maybe adding some animations to make it feel even smoother. But overall, I’m pretty happy with how this “magic spot menu” turned out. It’s a small thing, but it makes using the diagram a whole lot easier.