Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!stanford.edu!leland.Stanford.EDU!elaine39.Stanford.EDU!draphsor From: draphsor@elaine39.Stanford.EDU (Matt Rollefson) Subject: Re: Standards for Balloon Help? Message-ID: Sender: news@leland.Stanford.EDU (Mr News) Organization: AIR, Stanford University References: <1CE00001.h2b15n@avalon.caladan.wa.com> Date: 14 Jun 91 18:16:31 GMT Lines: 26 stui@avalon.caladan.wa.com (Stuart Burden) writes: >In article <14057@goofy.Apple.COM>, carr@apple.com (Randy Carr) writes: > | Graying out the Show Balloons menu item just isn't appropriate. >Why..? Once you've seen it, you've seen it...! An obvious user interface >flaw is the "Help" key on the Extended Keyboards.. doesn't turn on >or off balloon help.. nor does Command-Help.. what the world really >needs is a keyboard shortcut to turn the item on or off, and if that >be the case, why not trash the icon? Why not a key to turn on or >off the display of the menu item? Check out the cdev helium on mac.archive.umich.edu. (in the /mac/system.extensions/cdev directory). It does exactly this - you hold down the option and command keys while pointing to something, and after a certain amount of time (about a second, I'd say) the balloon help for the item you're pointing to pops up. Very nice... And, it's free! Just picked it up yesterday, so I don't know if it'll have any problems, but thus far no crashes or anything. Looks like a well-written little utility. >stui@avalon.uucp >stui@avalon.caladan.wa.com -- Draphsor vo'drun-Aelf draphsor@leland.stanford.edu