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From: bobr@zeus.UUCP (Robert Reed)
Newsgroups: net.cog-eng
Subject: Re: default menu item selection
Message-ID: <455@zeus.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 5-Feb-85 14:34:30 EST
Article-I.D.: zeus.455
Posted: Tue Feb  5 14:34:30 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 7-Feb-85 06:47:20 EST
Organization: Tektronix, Beaverton OR
Lines: 38

Ken Warner claims that the only purpose of pop up menus (pums) is to
conserve screen space.  He overlooks the fact that pums are also used to
reduce arm motion in menu selection.  I've seen several workstations that
have greater than 24 x 80 character resolution that still use pums for that
purpose.  Greater resolution (or multiple screens) do NOT eliminate the
usefulness of pums.

Admittedly, there are other mechanisms for reducing arm motion in menu
systems.  But given that you are doing menu selection via pointing device,
you can either make the menu transient (popup) or permanent (dedicate a
porstion of the screen).  In either case, it will require a button on the
pointing device.  You can either overload a button by forcing arm motion to
a particular field on the screen (static menus and Apple pull-down menus),
or you can dedicate a button for menu use (smallTalk-80, Sun, Apollo, etc.)

If you pick a fixed area to hold a dedicated menu, you are limited to the
number of entries you can place there, which should be limited to avoid
confusion.  You could change its contents (when?), or you could have several
fixed areas.  This second choice opens the question of how the user would
know which one was active.

By using a popup, you reinforce the model of particular functions associated
with particular areas of the screen (windows, objects and other fields), and
you trade short term memory use and hand training for recognition and
reaction time.  I've seen some systems that take advantage of both models,
dedicating one button for popups and another for fixed menus.

Contrary to Ken's belief about the future, multiple screens have already
been tried and generally are a second-best alternative to a single large
screen with more resolution.  With multiple screens (which are always going
to be a more expensive solution than a single screen, whatever the cost of
the display), the designer is faced with the problem of letting the user
know where to look, and potentially the more complicated interface
addressing the multiple screens.  The best way to deal with multiple screens
would be to treat them both physically and logically as a single, larger
screen.
-- 
Robert Reed, Logic Design Systems Division, tektronix!teklds!bobr