QGIS » QGIS Application

In #9072 I refer to some problems in UI design. As the team wished more specific suggestions, I like to discuss on how the QGIS contextmenus might be improved.

Currently the contextmenues are filled with a lot of stuff, that doesn't look (to me) well ordered and sometimes mix the context. Thus I suggest:

• contextmenus should be limited to features that correspond to the current clicked object-type context (layer, style, object at workspace)
• contextmenus should reflect the usual system UI design guide ordering (copy, paste, select, ...)
• in contextmenu use seperators to group sets of tools
• menu entries should explain what objects they refer to

This results in the new ordered layer contextmenu:

copy layer
paste layer
remove layer
--
Open Attribute table...
Filter ...
Set Layer CRS
Set Project CRS from layer (? is this copy CRS? then better implement a 'paste layer properties' feature where the user can select what should be overwritten by the pasted layer)
-- (maybe the following section would be better as buttons in the layer window?)
zoom to layer extend
show in overview (maybe better move to layer properties?)
show feature count
expand all 
collapse all
-- (maybe the following section better as mainmenu entries or contextmenu in the map workspace?)
Save as...
Save selection as...
--
properties

Please note, that I skipped some entries and some I move to different contextmenus

So the style contextmenu looks now like this:

copy style
paste style
rename style
--
add new group
update drawing order
properties

IMHO it's wise to add a contextmenu to the map workspace that have a stronger visual link to the following aspects:

• selection (on current layer)
• data objects at mouse cursor (just on current layer or at all visible layers?)

I would be interested on see other opinions and from the devs on that aspect of usability.