Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!bloom-beacon!husc6!lloyd!kent
From: kent@lloyd.camex.uucp (Kent Borg)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: New (?) idea for MF menu bar icon
Message-ID: <347@lloyd.camex.uucp>
Date: 21 Mar 89 04:00:11 GMT
References: <41d593be.14e0d@robocop.engin.umich.edu> <700@unocss.UUCP>
Reply-To: kent@lloyd.UUCP (Kent Borg)
Organization: Camex, Inc., Boston, Mass USA
Lines: 49

In article <700@unocss.UUCP> dent@unocss.UUCP (Dave Caplinger) writes:
>Better still, why not do away with the ugly thing altogether, and put the
>menubars for seperate applications in the windows themselves, scrollable
>in a way similar to the recently posted MenuScroll INIT...?

I don't know what MenuScroll INIT does (we don't get binaries here,
someone send me a copy :-), but I have been watching some new
Macintosh users trying to master a fairly new Macintosh II here at
work.  I also watch new Macintosh users at The Boston Computer
Society's Resource Center.  I start to see some of the problems with
the current Macintosh user interface.

MultiFinder might be one of the best kludges ever written, but the
user interface isn't what it should be.  Users will close their
window, appreciate the warning about saving their document, see their
floppy on the desktop, eject it, and walk away.  Makes perfect sense.
The problem is that the application is still running, taking up
memory, and the floppy holding the application is now `off line', but
still mounted and sitting on the desktop.

The problem is that users want to open and close *documents*.  They
will sometimes consent to opening an application when they want to
start a new document, but they would otherwise rather not worry about
the detail of whether an application is running or not.  Why should
they?  MultiFinder already allows users to double click a document for
an application which is already running.  The concept of running an
application is already obscure, why not obscure it the last amount?
Why this pedantic distinction between putting an application on disk
and having it in RAM?  How many Macintosh users even know what RAM
stands for or why (after all, ROM is just as Random Access)?

As we head toward interprocess communication--Macintosh-style, where
the *user* decides who talks to whom and the *user* mixes and matches
features--applications will begin to lose their importance.  The user
will think in terms of the data and what can be done to it.  The silly
idea of only doing things from within a single application will start
to disappear.  Hot links will make the clipboard look terribly old
fashioned and quaint.

As for menus at the top of windows, I think I like them and I think
Apple agrees.  Have you seen the Knowlege Navigator video?  Did you
see the second, less futuristic companion?  It had colored menu bars
at the top of the windows on a very large CRT.  Kinda like McSink or
big QuicKeys windows.  Seemed significant to me...

Kent Borg
kent@lloyd.uucp
or
...!hscfvax!lloyd!kent