Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!munnari.oz.au!bunyip!brolga!uqcspe!batserver.cs.uq.oz.au!brendan From: brendan@batserver.cs.uq.oz.au (Brendan Mahony) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc Subject: Re: Can't resize windows? (was Re: Windows 3.0 & the Mac) Message-ID: <4320@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au> Date: 19 Jul 90 07:25:32 GMT References: <1990Jul18.173018.18971@midway.uchicago.edu> Sender: news@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au Reply-To: brendan@batserver.cs.uq.oz.au Distribution: comp Lines: 53 I will preface my comments with some philosophy. The aim of the Macintosh interface is to provide a consistent user interface across all applications. The perceived benefit of this is that if you know the Mac interface and you know what you want the program to do and it can do it then you will be able to get it to do it with a minimum of fuss. No need to read 200 page tutorials and manuals, no need to bug the system administrator or the software vendor. This is what people mean when they say an application has a good mac-interface. The purpose is not to have the very best interface for each individual application, or even application area. To justify an addition to the Mac interface it has to be useful for every application. If we want to discuss the pros and cons of this philosophy then fine, but let's make it explicit. Otherwise what is the point? barnett@grymoire.crd.ge.com (Bruce Barnett) writes: >In article <1990Jul18.173018.18971@midway.uchicago.edu> gft_robert@gsbacd.uchicago.edu writes: >>I personally find pop-up (a la Sun) menus confusing. I use computers all day >>long, so I'm not a novice. How easy do you think pop-up menus would be for the >>novice/average user? >I never said that pop-up menus would replace the pull-down menus. >They could augment the Mac interface and be a superset of the current >UI. There sometimes but not others? Goodbye! >> >>First, a 2 or 3 button mouse doesn't provice a more efficient interface. Check >>out the Next. A multi-button mouse is _much_ harder to learn to use. >I agree that some interfaces that use multiple mouse buttons are bad. >That doesn't mean that they are all bad, or hard to learn. >People keep talking about users who get confused with the >functionality of the different mouse buttons. >Surely people have considered ways to solve this problem. >I can think of a dozen physical ways off the top of my head. Okay. Give us 2/3 functions which are always useful, no matter what is being pointing at. -- Brendan Mahony | brendan@batserver.cs.uq.oz | Department of Computer Science | University of Queensland | Australia |