Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!oz.cis.ohio-state.edu!jgreely From: jgreely@oz.cis.ohio-state.edu (J Greely) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: Minor Annoyances Message-ID: Date: 1 Aug 89 01:17:54 GMT References: <7189@microsoft.UUCP> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Reply-To: J Greely Organization: Ohio State University Computer and Information Science Lines: 67 In-reply-to: t-jondu@microsoft.UUCP's message of 31 Jul 89 21:38:21 GMT In article <7189@microsoft.UUCP> t-jondu@microsoft.UUCP (Jonathan Dubman) writes: >1. Menus can pop-up partially offscreen. This is visually unattractive and > distracting. Is there any justification for this? Since pop-ups are optional, I'd call it a minor implementation detail. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they vanished entirely in a future release. Disappointed, but not surprised (I *hate* stuck-ups). >2. Browser: Great, but why not use traditional scroll bar? There's no way > to tell how much what proportion of the directory I'm seeing. Is there > any particular reason why up is to the right? (Or was it to the left?) Why not use traditional scrollbars? No particular reason is mentioned in the user docs, but I can speculate: a "traditional" scrollbar would visually separate directory hierarchies, tending to obscure their relationship. A quick prototype of such a system (ain't IB wonderful?) convinced me that normal scrollbars don't feel right for the browser model. I can't necessarily argue in favor of side-by-side buttons, but I wouldn't replace them with a scrollbar. >3. Dictionary: Pictures have numbers that don't seem to refer to anything. > Try looking up "sail" or "violin". Yes, the captions associated with the illustrations do not appear. I have no idea what's being done with this, if anything (Ali?). The problem seems fairly obvious. As I recall, the dictionary data is massaged from the typesetting tape, and the illustrations are scanned by hand. The captions are part of the illustration, not part of the text, and would have to be either scanned or typed in by hand. Scanning seems like a bad idea, and merging them into the main data file isn't terribly exciting either. I suppose they could be typed in as small RTF files, stored and displayed like the pictures (small scrolling field in the window?). Still quite a bit of work, if I'm at all correct in my assumptions, but I'd like to see it. >4. Windows have no window-to-back gadgets ala Intuition on the Amiga. > (The only machine I've seen that has this very handy feature.) Ah, the infamous "bury me" feature. It exists in several window systems besides the Amiga's (MGR comes to mind), although it doesn't always rate a button/gadget/thingie. I use it when it's supported, but don't much miss it on large screens. > One thing I do > ALL THE TIME on the Amiga is have about five totally overlapping > windows that all take up the same region of the screen, and scroll > between them with the window-to-back gadget. Do you have a 17-19 inch screen on your Amiga? It sounds like you use the "bury" feature to compensate for lack of screen space. The combination of screen acreage, app icons, and miniaturized windows on the NeXT should more than compensate. (now, if we only had X10-style active icons...) > Do I have my head in the sand? Convince me I don't need such a feature. Do you really want instant backgrounding, or instant *fore*grounding? Double-clicking on an app's icon brings its window to the front, allowing you to get effectively the same results as if you buried each overlapping window in turn. Disclaimer: My opinions, not OSU's. Certainly not NeXT's, although if they like my resume... -=- J Greely (jgreely@cis.ohio-state.edu; osu-cis!jgreely)