Now thats a good idea! Have seven slots for the fish as empty holes. Drag and drop the fish you want, right into the hole.
If you want an empty slot, drag in a "blank".
Actually, User Interface Guidelines dictate that if you want a blank spot, you drag the item from that box and drop it somewhere it doesn't go, like outside the window.
(I) If you want random fish, drag in the random image (an icon of several fish) and that would open a pop up menu for fine tuning (with the sliders) the random order of fish FOR THAT SLOT! Each slot could have a diferent possibility of random choices.
I think this would be very complicated and non-intuitive to have each slot be variably configurable with different fish. This would be very confusing for most users and would not give us much more control than the 2nd prototype I designed.
If you take another look at prototype #2, you'll see that you add the fish you always want, and then random question marks for the rest of the slots. Then on the Advanced panel, you determine with what frequency each fish should or should not go in the random slots.
(II) Alternately, if you happen to drag MORE than on fish into a slot (say you just dragged a Yellow Tang into slot one, and then dragged a Clown Fish into the SAME slot) you would get an even amount of randomnes for that slot of each fish dragged into it.
This would make it impossible to tell from a glance just what goes in each slot. According to user interface guidelines, dragging a fish twice into a slot should not double its likelyhood of appearing.
The whole point of each spot is for the user to demand 1 certain fish ALWAYS APPEAR in that slot. Trying to commingle randomness with requested fish would make for a tech support nightmare @ SereneScreen. I hate to be dogmatic about anything, but what you suggest goes completely against user interface guidelines.
And to show what fish is in that slot, the images would SCROLL by, (or even swim by one after the other so you can see which fish is in that slot.)
I'm not sure what extra power this gives you over prototype #2, but it would make it very confusing for users. This would make it extremely non-intuitive because most users will try to drag another fish to a slot and expect it to REPLACE the old fish and become the only fish in that slot, not add another fish to a ONE FISH SLOT.
Please look at prototype #2 again. Also, remember that in the version of the Aquarium with the 3D background, there will likely be 10 fish slots.
Can you in clude 3D in a windows menu item??)
Not easily.
You don't work for Macromedia do you?
