Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!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: <533@sunfs3.camex.uucp> Date: 12 Oct 89 17:43:38 GMT References: <2722@trantor.harris-atd.com> <16179@brunix.UUCP> <19812@mimsy.UUCP> <523@sunfs3.camex.uucp> <14011@well.UUCP> Reply-To: kent@lloyd.UUCP (Kent Borg) Organization: Camex, Inc., Boston, Mass USA Lines: 69 In article <14011@well.UUCP> shf@well.UUCP (Stuart H. Ferguson) writes: >+-- kent@lloyd.UUCP (Kent Borg) writes: >| 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 >| [ ... ] quickly be presented with >| well over a hundred uncluttered menu choices. > >So what's so great about hundreds of menu choices? Most of the programs >I've seen with these kinds of menus suffer from what I would call, "digital >watch syndrome." Dozens of different functions are all cramed together >into the same interface without regard for a logical, coherent structure >for them to coexist. The result is like those watches that do about 57 >different things all controlled with four buttons. Yes, many Macintosh programs suffer from bad cases of featuritus, and when someone complains about it they often use the original MacDraw as an example of a clean user interface. I don't hear people complain that the original MacDraw was too cluttered. In fact, MacDraw 1.9.5 was the program I looked at to estimate the number of menu choices in a `typical' Macintosh program. There are 152 individual menui choices in MacDraw 1.9.5, plus whatever fonts you have installed. Sounds like a lot, but when you use the program it doesn't look so bad. The "Fill" menu has a block of 36 different patterns, and the "Pen" menu is the same, but because they are visually clear, users do not need to wade through those 72 items when looking for the way to control layering or drawing size. The "Line" menu is also visually clear--being samples of the line weights available. That makes 3 of the 9 menus easily understood. Of the remaining 6, "File" and "Edit" are where they always are and pretty much do what they always do. Next, the "Style" and "Font" menus are also easily recognizable by a Macintosh user. That leaves "Arrange" and "Layout". These two menus and their 25 items are the main place a new MacDraw user needs to look to see what MacDraw is about. The "well over a hundred" menu choices need not look like the clutter of two decks of cards dropped on the floor, they should be well layed out and be quite clear. >The user need only be concerned with the object that needs changing >at the moment, and never even needs to see the options available for >any others. I can see how that makes dealing with that current object easier than being confronted with the whole program the whole time, but it seems to me that being confronted with a multitude of changing option sets depending on the current object would make it so the the user can never feel that she knows the program and has seen what it can do, instead she is constantly obligated to rescan the menus to see what new options might be available now. >The Star had a lot of really nice ideas that seemed to get dropped >along the way somewhere. When I first started playing with the Star- >style of user interface only a short time ago, I was quite astonished >at how it got by with so few menus, and replaced a proliferation of >menus with a system of interaction that was better organized, cleaner >and easier to learn. Sounds interesting. I have never met a Star in the flesh, anybody in the Boston area have one I could see? -- 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