Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!microsoft!roberth
From: roberth@microsoft.UUCP (Robert Hess)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: Menus in NDA windows
Summary: Menus in NDA windows aren't that tough
Message-ID: <9338@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 6 Dec 89 17:13:04 GMT
References: <8911300611.AA17058@apple.com>
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
Lines: 55

Joe Wankerl asked the original question:

|| ...an NDA which could use a menu bar...  Is there an easy way to do
|| this?

To which Matt Deathridge responded:

| ...the answer is "yes." Strategies for this are discussed in Apple IIgs
| Technical Note #3.
|
|
| Even easier is a pop-up menu as a control, which TaskMasterDA will
| handle for you.  All you'll have to do is check to see which control was
| selected, and when it's the pop-up, go get the current selection from
| the control record.

Menu's in an NDA are easy, although people don't use them very often
(actually not at all, as far as I have seen) I do have code for a 'minimum'
NDA for TML Pascal that illustrates this. Anybody who wants it, please eMail
me and I'll eMail it back to you, no sense clogging up the forum.

...and what follows is a 'personal' style opinion hopefully nobody will take
offense...

Unless there is a trick to make a pop-up menu look almost exactly like a
pulldown menu in an NDA, I personally would recommend against people
putting a pop-up in their info bar (with some exceptions).  I have seen
an NDA that uses this shortcut to have 'menuness' in their application,
and I personally don't care for how it looks (the same application used
different colors for the window border and such, which also looked
unappealing).  People are used to having menus at the top of their
applications.  They know how to use them, and they recognize them when
they see them.  If you want to diverge from this, it should be for
*good* reasons, not just because it is easier to code.  Maintain the
'look and feel' of the Apple Interface, it is there for a reason.

I have also seen people using the 'square' button type rather then the
'round' button type in their applications (includeing Apple's sample
apps) I feel that this too is an improper practice.  Buttons are round.
That is what people are used to seeing.  Sure, us programmers and
experienced users who are comfortable with the apple can recognize all
sorts of weird controls, and use them instantly, and aren't scared to
experiment.  But I have tutored new users, who *need* to have a
consistant user interface, and are *scared* when they don't recognize
something.  Change the shape, position, usage of a control, and they are
lost.

- Robert
 __________________________________________________________________________
     #####   ####### |	  Robert B. Hess, Microsoft Corp., Redmond, WA
    ######  #######  |-----------------------------------------------------
   ####### #######   |	roberth@microsof.uu.net
  #### ##### ####    |	{decvax, uunet, uw-beaver}!microsof!roberth
 ####  ###  ####     |_____________________________________________________
   "...my opinions are strictly my own, and not those of my employer..."