Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!hellgate.utah.edu!cc.utah.edu!tjacobs
From: TJACOBS@cc.utah.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re^2 System 7 talk: Hierarchial Apple Menus
Message-ID: <69335@cc.utah.edu>
Date: 12 Jun 90 19:29:59 GMT
References: <1990Jun11.140654.15033@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <68207@cc.utah.edu> <41795@apple.Apple.COM> <1990Jun11.184321.29561@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Lines: 58


Ok, a folder in the Apple Menu Folder sounds like a good idea. I know Apple
Human Interface folks will say that this special folder doesn't conform to
the model of all the folders showing up in the Apple Menu itself.

(I'm just trying to play the devils advocate here)

How does the new user find out how to create the appropriate folder to have
hierarchical folders? I agree that the checkbox isn't good interface design
but at least it is something that can be found. (Perhaps this folder is one
that is created automatically so that it is always there.)

Now I need some additional ammo to send to Apple (Applelink - Human Interface
discussion board). So far in bringing up the subject I have seen very little
discussion on Apples part, only statements on how it will be when Sys 7 comes
out. The have said things like there are very few people who will want it and
they will be taken care of by some third party INIT. One of the big reasons
I am trying to push for this is that too often the INITs that do these kinds of
things have to do some real low level hacking and end up causing conflicts with
other things and making an already bomb prone system even less stable. I am
also pushing for this because I think this is a very powerful feature and helps
organize things tremendously.

Now if you think I am overzealous in any of these points or there are other
reasons why this isn't all that important of a thing to push, please mail me.
I have not received any votes against hierarchial apple menus as long as they
are implimented in a decent fashion. Many of the votes were agains hierarchial
menus in general but for them in the apple menu which is how I feel.


As a side note I discovered something interesting about hierarchial menus in
general that may not be know commonly. Perhaps it wasn't always this way and
has changes with some system version. I think many are suffering from a bad
habbit. People try to navigate their cursor thourght the narrow band by moving
only horizontally to get over to the poped out hierarchial menu. No need to!
They operate such that when you have a main menu item hilited and the
popout is showing, you can go at an angle across the lower main menu
items without loosing the popout! This appears to be accomplished with two
techniques. One it looks to see if you are going at an angle versus straight
down and it pauses for a second or so to give you time to get to the popout.
This can be demonstrated by selecting a hierarchial main menu and then going
at an angle down and pausing on one of the main menu items. It will pause for
a second or so before switching to that item. This doesn't happen if you are
going straight down or real close to straight down. They need to apply this
feature to the menu bar. Many times you go at an angle to select the first item
on a menu which is a hierarchial menu and you go at an angle to the right arrow
and it switches to the next menu.

I've also noticed many good applications are giving the user the choice of
whether or not they want hierarchial memus or not. Good Idea. Claris to name
one of them! Perhaps Apple needs to learn something from its offspring!

Tony Jacobs
Center for Engineering Design
University of Utah

t-jacobs@ced.utah.edu
or tjacobs@cc.utah.edu