Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!think!husc6!sunfs3!kent
From: kent@sunfs3.camex.uucp (Kent Borg)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Menu Interaction Techniques
Keywords: mouse ahead, pie menus
Message-ID: <523@sunfs3.camex.uucp>
Date: 2 Oct 89 20:20:39 GMT
References: <2722@trantor.harris-atd.com> <16179@brunix.UUCP> <19812@mimsy.UUCP>
Reply-To: kent@lloyd.UUCP (Kent Borg)
Organization: Camex, Inc., Boston, Mass USA
Lines: 53

In article <19812@mimsy.UUCP> don@brillig.umd.edu.UUCP (Don Hopkins) writes:

[Interesting stuff on the ability to mouse-ahead and that specific
menu items can be learned as motor memory in a way which is impossible
with linear menus.]

I begin to see the value in pie menus, but I am not yet convinced of
the extent of that value.  

I think my concerns boil down to the following: menus are for more
than quickly making selections, but first let's look at the speed
issue.

Being able to mouse-ahead is most valuable as a dramatic illustration
of the fact that a user can remember how to make a choice without
careful use of visual feedback.  That is a good feature, but let's not
put too much value on mousing-ahead.  The bottom-of-the-line Macintosh
Plus manages to display menus very quickly.  I don't think we should
excuse high-end workstations from at least matching that speed.

The other value to menus is that they present the user with choices
which must be recognized, but need not be remembered.  Seen from that
perspective, the Macintosh menu bar is not a linear menu system.
Rather it is a very compact 2-dimensional menu system.  The user can
fling the speed-scaled mouse at the top of the screen and hit the
mouse button.  One remembered action and she is using the menus.  Next
she can move the mouse left and right and be quickly be presented with
well over a hundred uncluttered menu choices.

Yes, for the Macintosh to operate on a screen which is narrower than
the sum of the widths of all of the indidual pulldown menus, the user
can only pull down one at a time, and the movement to do that is more
complicated because of it, but the pay-off is enormous.

The speed and ease with which the user can see all of the first level
menu choices is very important.  It is one of the reasons I can sit
down at a new Macintosh program and immediately start using it.

I don't mean to get into a Macintosh menus vs. pie menus fight, but I
understand Macintosh menus and use them as a reference point.
Certainly the Macintosh user interface has problems, like the fact
that the menu bar keeps getting farther and farther away as we get
more and more screen real estate (though the above mentioned
speed-scaling of the pointer is very important in making life as easy
as it is now).

How do pie menus do at quickly presenting the user with lots of
choices?

-- 
Kent Borg				"Then again I could be foolish 
kent@lloyd.uucp				 not to quit while I'm ahead..."
or					     -from Evita (sung by Juan Peron)
...!husc6!lloyd!kent