Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Path: utzoo!lsuc!jmm
From: jmm@lsuc.on.ca (John Macdonald)
Subject: Re: System 7 talk: Hierarchial Apple Menus
Message-ID: <1990Jun16.030103.13585@lsuc.on.ca>
Summary: user control is a new concept
Organization: Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto
References: <68207@cc.utah.edu> <8655@goofy.Apple.COM> <13407@wpi.wpi.edu> <41889@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: Sat, 16 Jun 90 03:01:03 GMT

In article <41889@apple.Apple.COM> lsr@Apple.COM (Larry Rosenstein) writes:
>
>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..."

Generally, the only place people have seen hierarchical menus previously
has been when using a program that had them - with the hierarchical
organization that seemed logical to the programmer who wrote the program.
Naturally, the chosen hierarchical layout seems wrong or confusing to
a significant number of users.

However, the proposal on the floor is for a hierarchical menu that can
be set up to present the choices using the user's own hierarchical
organization - they have the choice of laying things out as well (or
as poorly) as they currently have the choice of laying out their files
within folders - I presume that noone would suggest that the MFS should
have been left alone and the HFS not introduced.  While the Apple Menu
is not hitting the limit of having thousands of entries, it does share
the aspect of having a user-extendable, arbitrarily large set of things
to organize.

>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.  
>
>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.)

Clearly, System 7's new features will take some getting used to - aliases
and their use from within the Apple Menu seem to cover much of what is
being requested with hierarchical menus.  There is one major perceptual
difference - going to the finder and opening a folder has (to me) the
perceptual overhead of being a change to the desktop view of the world,
while pulling down a menu (whether hierarchical or not) is a temporary
overlay on top of the desktop that will disappear after selection (while
the selection may cause a new window to appear, it will not leave the
menu on the screen).

>Larry Rosenstein,  Object Specialist
>Apple Computer, Inc.  20525 Mariani Ave, MS 77-A  Cupertino, CA 95014
>AppleLink:Rosenstein1    domain:lsr@Apple.COM
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