Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!umich!umeecs!zip!spencer From: spencer@eecs.umich.edu (Spencer W. Thomas) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system Subject: Re: Re^2 System 7 talk: Hierarchial Apple Menus Message-ID: Date: 15 Jun 90 04:23:52 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> <14122@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM> Sender: news@zip.eecs.umich.edu Organization: University of Michigan EECS Dept Lines: 54 In-reply-to: dave@PRC.Unisys.COM's message of 14 Jun 90 14:03:26 GMT In fact, there's a nice CDEV called "menu tuner" that allows you to adjust the time constants involved in the hierarchical menu support. Some comments from the documentation: ---------------- Who needs it? Anyone who's ever been frustrated when a submenu in a hierarchical menu went away before you could select an item in it, or who's ever been bothered by seeing all the hierarchical menus flash before your eyes as you scroll up and down the main menu. What now? MenuTuner displays two timing values that your Macintosh uses to determine how hierarchical menus behave; these are called the "Drag Delay" and the "Submenu Delay". What's the "Drag Delay"? ... In order to do what you really wanted to do all along (pick a font!), you need to mouse over to the "submenu" from the main menu -- before it disappears! Here's where the Dray Delay comes in. As long as your mouse stays positioned over the "Fonts" item in the main menu, the fonts submenu stays in view. But when you start moving toward the list of fonts to select one, you have only a certain amount of time before the menu disappears. If you don't get to your selection soon enough, you're out of luck. This interval, the amount of time a "submenu" stays around waiting for you to select an item in it, is called the "Drag Delay". Apple in its wisdom sets the standard "default" value at 60 "ticks", or one second. If this is okay for you, good. If not, you've got MenuTuner! What's the "Submenu Delay"? If you're scrolling your mouse down a menu with a number of hierarchical items, it can be distracting to have all the "submenus" appearing and disappearing in a flash as you move up and down the main menu. Take Freehand's "Type" menu as an example again; the first five items -- "Font", "Size", "Leading", "Type style", and "Effect", all have hierarchical submenus. Ideally you'd like to be able to move your mouse up and down the main menu at your own pace, pause at the item you want to select, and see the appropriate submenu come up, WITHOUT having to see all the other submenus flash on and off as you scroll by. The "Submenu Delay" determines how long your mouse can rest on a menu item before its associated submenu is displayed. Apple's default value is 8 "ticks", about one-eighth of a second. ---------------- You can also find a description of the parameters and the drag action on page 24 of Inside Mac Vol V. -- =Spencer (spencer@eecs.umich.edu)