Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!dali.cs.montana.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!uflorida!mephisto!udel!burdvax!dave
From: dave@PRC.Unisys.COM (David Lee Matuszek)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: Re^2 System 7 talk: Hierarchial Apple Menus
Message-ID: <14122@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM>
Date: 14 Jun 90 14:03:26 GMT
References: <1990Jun11.140654.15033@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <68207@cc.utah.edu> <41795@apple.Apple.COM> <1990Jun11.184321.29561@Neon.Stanford.EDU> <69335@cc.utah.edu>
Sender: news@PRC.Unisys.COM
Organization: Unisys Corporation, Paoli Research Center; Paoli, PA
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In article <69335@cc.utah.edu> TJACOBS@cc.utah.edu writes:

>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.

Well, I learn something every day.

Yes, one of the biggest pains about hierarchical menus is trying to
move *precisely* sideways, without slipping up or down more than a few
pixels.  The tricks you mention sound like a great way to ameliorate
the problem.

However, I haven't ever noticed this behaviour in any of the programs
I typically use.  I assume this is part of Apple's new hierarchical
menu support?  Probably the applications I use have their own, older
methods for doing hierarchical menus; in that case, things will
improve as developers start using the Apple routines.

>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!

Bad Idea.  Creeping Featurism, otherwise known as the Unix Mentality.
(So flame me.)

-- Dave Matuszek (dave@prc.unisys.com)
-- Unisys Corp. / Paoli Research Center / PO Box 517 / Paoli PA  19301
-- Any resemblance between my opinions and those of my employer is improbable.
< You can put a mouse on an IBM.  And you can put a radio on a motorcycle. >