Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!oliveb!felix!john
From: john@felix.UUCP (John Gilbert)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Pull down menus.
Message-ID: <24988@felix.UUCP>
Date: 15 Mar 88 01:05:34 GMT
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Reply-To: john@felix.UUCP (John Gilbert)
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>   This sounds like a fun idea, provided that it exists SOLELY as an
>alternative to the standard interface.  The reason the Macintosh has a one-
>button mouse (in case anyone doesn't know) is that the average user works
>faster with a single button.  Apple tested this fairly extensively, and it
>turns out that most people get confused when there's more than one button on
>the mouse.

Apple doesn't have a one button mouse really.  They just put the other
two buttons on the keyboard.  What this did was to abandon convention for
the various combinations of buttons.  Really, very few programs run without
using the Command and Option keys as modifiers for the one button located
on the mouse, and they do not all use these combinations in the same manner.
The use of SHFT-Click to group select is probably the most uniform of these.

What it did do tho, was suggest to developers that use of button combinations
is to be classified as extended functionality, not as part of a common
interface.  It forces them to think in terms of designing for simplicity,
and treating advanced features as extra-ordinary.  This is not necessarily
a bad thing, and probably there are good arguments on both sides.

On result: you have things like "Power Users Guide" to tell you
about things that are not intuitive.  Many of the tips in these publications
are how to moidify the meaning of the mouse.  Ya just gotta use two hands.

John Gilbert

--
John Gilbert
!trwrb!felix!john