Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!hellgate.utah.edu!cc.utah.edu!tjacobs From: TJACOBS@cc.utah.edu Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system Subject: Re: System 7 talk: Hierarchial Apple Menus Message-ID: <69651@cc.utah.edu> Date: 14 Jun 90 05:59:20 GMT References: <68207@cc.utah.edu> <8655@goofy.Apple.COM> <13407@wpi.wpi.edu> <41889@apple.Apple.COM> Lines: 176 In article <41889@apple.Apple.COM>, lsr@Apple.COM (Larry Rosenstein) writes: > In article <13407@wpi.wpi.edu> macman@wpi.wpi.edu (Chris Silverberg) writes: > >> has been a VERY positive response to this just based on what I've > read.... > > No one ever said that user interface design should be done by popularity > polls. There was lots of support for a hierarchical Apple menu on > AppleLink as well, although I heard it was booed at the Developers > Conference. Was the booing for hierarchical menus in general or for them in the Apple menu? I think the replys so far indicate it was the former. > >> Do YOU favor the idea? > > I don't favor adding hierarchical menus to the Apple menu. I almost > always cringe when I see a hierarchical menu. I find it interesting that > many people began their arguments in favor of hierarchical menus by saying > "Well, I don't like hierarchical menus, but in this case..." I think one of the reasons people have a bad feeling about hierarchial menus is that there are good things to use them for and bad things to use them for. Having 3 or 4 levels you *HAVE* to go through is not fun. It is much better to bring up a dialog box for many things like that. I think the problem lies in defineing the good uses and the bad uses. Part of the problem also lies in a lack of education on how they work. You DON'T have to go throught the narrow horizontal channel to get to the sub menu. > > The current implementation is very simple to explain and understand, since > there's a 1-1 mapping between items in the Apple Menu folder and items in > the Apple menu. Selecting an item from the menu is equivalent to opening > the icon. There isn't a 1-1 mapping if you want to get technical. Folders are hierarch- ical by nature. If your going to have folders in the menu why not have them actin a similar manner to how a folder does? I just thought of another possible mechanism for hierarchial apple menus: Real folders in the Apple menu folder show as hierarchial, aliased folders show as just the folder. > > Adding hierarchical menus would complicate things. First, I think people > wanted a choice for each folder of whether its item in the Apple menu > included a hierarchical menu of its contents. So you need an additional > mechanism to make this choice. I don't see whats so complicated. Either the folder is hierarchical or not. Sure there needs to be a mechanism, just because there is doesn't mean it really complicates things significantly. If the utility gained from the feature is significant then things are in whole simplified. What I origionally meant by the apple menu becomming a central control center is that people will be going to the apple menu to initiate a lot more things in System 7 than ever before. The apple menu will become a short-cut center with System 7. I believe that hierarchial menus make the cut a little shorter. Example: I want to bring up a particular control panel item (not a really common one as I would likely put it directly in the apple menu), if it was in a hierarchial menu I would select it directly, and it would come up in it's own memory partition. If I had to bring it up in a real folder then a switch to the Finder takes place and the folder has to come up. This takes time (which could perhaps be optimized), then you have to visually locate the control file you want and then you have to double click to open it up. Now don't forget you also have one additional thing to do after your done, you have to put the folder away. All this additional mousing around is totally unecessary and wastes my time. Remember that seconds, even split seconds add to the perception that a computer is fast and/or usefull. I want to do my work and not think about the 3 or 4 extra steps it might take to do a job. > > Then there was the issue of limiting the number of levels, which makes it > harder to explain to users. Right now the Apple menu corresponds to the > contents of the folder. If you add one level of hierarchical menu then > you are partially modelling the hierarchical folder structure. I don't think there should be a limit to the levels. Let the user choose. I would personally choose 1 additional sub level in most cases. > > Regardless of how you organize the menu, the more items the system has to > keep track of, the more time and space it will require. I don't think this is a very good argument. Very little time or space. > > Some one suggested that selecting items from palette is faster than from a > menu. In that case, opening an icon from a Finder window (in View by Name > mode) should be faster than choosing the same item from a hierarchical > menu. That would be true if the window were already open and in view, which is probably not the norm. One of the points I made above is that if you don't have to switch to the Finder it saves time. > > You can make the folder instantly appear by selecting it from the Apple > menu, rather than hunting for it as you have to do today. This may take > an additional step, but it may be just as fast, given the difficulty of > selecting from hierarchical menus. (If it isn't fast to do this, then > perhaps the Finder needs to be optimized for this kind of case.) > Difficulty? Maybe a slight delay. I just timmed how long it takes to select the "Genreal" control panel item using HierDA/DA menuz and it took me 4 seconds to select it. That includes the time it took to start the timmer in SuperClock! and the little hunting for the item in the menu (I have 28 items) because I didn't see it right off and the time to overshoot by two items and back up to the actual item. Now go time how long it takes with System 7. If you want to do a fair test have 28 items in the folder and use SuperClocks timmer. You should also do the test while in another application besides the Finder as thats where most people should be. I'll go do the test myself and report back how long it took me. > I don't have a good rebuttal to the argument that the hierarchical Apple > menu would just be an option for those who want it. > > For one thing, a lot of Macintoshes aren't used by a single person, so > there's a good possibility that users will encounter it unexpectedly. > My wife is a supreme novice. I just asked her what she thought the arrow next to the menu meant. She replied that she didn't know, then after selecting that menu she saw the sub menu pop out and she said it was additional items to choose from. Plenty easy enough for the new user. > I think the same argument could be applied to any user interface feature, > but I wouldn't want to add every feature that someone comes up with, or > that some other program has. > If the feature helps organize things and speeds computer use, would you want to add it? > It's usually a mistake to use the wrong tool for a job. I also think it's > a bad idea to add more and more features to a tool in the hope that it can > handle different jobs. The trend today is towards applications/utilities > that do one job very well and that integrate with other applications. If you're talking about the apple menu as the tool then what System 7 does to it is add more features! Now you can launch applications directly from the menu. Before you could just run little utilities called DA's. Some of those utilities didn't really fit anywhere else like the Chooser and the Control panel. With System 7 it also adds links to the Finder. I claim Apple is making the Apple menu a short-cut center in addition to the "About", "Controls", and DA's. They're moving the current application switching & window hiding items to the MF menu under the silly guise of needing that icon to be a menu. Perhaps the real reason is to simplify the Apple menu to make way for the new stuf! Allowing hierarchial menus in the Apple menu is letting the user tune this tool (the Apple menu) to function as a more efficient and organized tool, this is a good idea. Adding the hierarchial feature doesn't allow the Apple menu to do a function it couldn't without them, it allows one to do it faster and in a more organized fashion which improves the usefullness of the tool. > > As I said before, I don't think you can turn the Apple menu into the > central control center of the Macintosh. If there's a need for additional > navigation features beyond what System 7 provides, then I think it's > better to address that problem directly, rather than slap on hierarchical > menus. > -- > Larry Rosenstein, Object Specialist > Apple Computer, Inc. 20525 Mariani Ave, MS 77-A Cupertino, CA 95014 > AppleLink:Rosenstein1 domain:lsr@Apple.COM > UUCP:{sun,voder,nsc,decwrl}!apple!lsr I appreciate your comments. I'm not trying to beat this thing to death. I work in an environment where continued discussion brings out the best features in any particular idea and this discussion is helping me to understand the issues a lot better. Tony Jacobs Center for Engineering Design University of Utah