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From: shubin@bartok.DEC (when's lunch?)
Newsgroups: net.cog-eng
Subject: Re: mouse cursors and default menu selections
Message-ID: <420@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 31-Jan-85 18:51:14 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.420
Posted: Thu Jan 31 18:51:14 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 1-Feb-85 21:50:48 EST
Sender: daemon@decwrl.UUCP
Organization: DEC Engineering Network
Lines: 47


> [in a message on NET.COG-ENG Joe Steffen, AT&T Bell Labs, asked:]
> When you press a mouse button to pop-up a menu, should the top item be the
> default selection, or the last item you selected on the menu?  The latter
> has the advantage that clicking the menu button repeats the last operation,
> but 
> 	1) is error prone because you have to remember the last operation
> 	   and if you forget you will select the wrong one,
> 	2) you have to decide whether to move the mouse up or down to get
> 	   to the correct item if you don't want the last item you selected.
> Thus you will save time if you repeat a selection and lose the half second
> deciding which way to go if you don't repeat.

I'm not sure that I agree with either of your suggestions.  I'm assuming
that by "top item" you mean the first item on the menu.

Having the top item be the last item that was selected implies dynamically
re-ordering the menu, which will lose more in confusion than it could
gain.  In fact, the other choice, making the top item be the default
selection, might mean re-ordering it as well, because the same menu in
different contexts might have different defaults.

I'd prefer something like this:  
	o When a mouse button is pressed, the popup menu appears where
	  the cursor was;
	o the cursor appears on the default selection;
	o the menu is exited by moving the cursor a defined distance away
	  from the menu.

That third bullet is there because it's probably the same amount of
movement to move away from the menu as to go to an EXIT choice, and because
the EXIT choice might wind up being the "previous selection" (see next
paragraph). 

I would still have the default choice be the previous selection, because
that's as likely as any other to be the desired choice this time.  But if
the menu has an EXIT choice, this doesn't work -- users will infrequently
want to EXIT from a menu that's just popped up.

					-- hal shubin
					   AI Technology Group 
					   Digital Equipment Corp. 
					   Hudson, MA
					   
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