Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!leah!itsgw!steinmetz!uunet!garfield!john13
From: john13@garfield.MUN.EDU (John Russell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: replacing the desktop metaphor (Why any metaphor?)
Keywords: desktop metaphor, graphical interfaces, computing environments
Message-ID: <5059@garfield.MUN.EDU>
Date: 1 Jan 89 19:08:23 GMT
References: <850@mtfmi.att.com> <673@cogsci.ucsd.EDU> <1489@umbc3.UMD.EDU> <5057@garfield.MUN.EDU> <3193@sugar.uu.net>
Reply-To: john13@garfield.UUCP (John Russell)
Organization: Memorial University of Newfoundland
Lines: 45

In article <3193@sugar.uu.net> Peter da Silva writes:
>
>You have it backwards. WB 1.4 should stop trying to look like the Mac and go
>to pop-up menus. 

I've never seen any "control gadgets" on the Mac desktop, just icons for 
objects (and I had to squint hard enough to make those out! :-).

I was thinking in terms of the menu structure itself providing roadblocks,
eg. a terse one-word identifier and no easy way to provide extended help.

Looking at the Workbench menus now (putting myself in the shoes of Joe
Beginner) I see options called "Info", "Initialize", "Clean Up", and "Snapshot"
all of which are initially ghosted. If I don't know about selecting an icon
by single-clicking before selecting a menu item I'm stuck (no way to get
feedback on why they don't work). At the very least they should not be ghosted
but output a titlebar message saying "single click an icon first".

Even if I know how to select them, their meaning is non-obvious. What sort of
pop-up menus do you envision that wouldn't have the same problems? I can see
a pop-up menu that contained only choices applicable to the currently selected
icon... but there should still be some way for someone to tell what
"Snapshot" does, built in to the Workbench, before he selects it. 

Hmmm, if there was a way to print a one-line summary of each item as the
menu select box moved over it... of course popup menus using windows don't
need to lock up the whole screen as you make a selection.

The popup menu idea has merit, but isn't part of the standard set of tools
Amiga users are experienced with. Introducing them in Intuition would be
a good idea, although the bugs probably wouldn't be ironed out in time to
really integrate them into the Workbench.

On the other hand lots of popular Amiga programs have gadget strips. I find
them easy to use (if not overdone), and they should be relatively simple to
add to the Workbench program without breaking anything.

John

PS But I agree that popup menus are preferable to pulldown ones (even wrote
some myself, but that was on the ST).
-- 
"If you steal all money, kids not be able to BUY TOYS!"
			-- Saturday morning cartoon character explaining
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