Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!lanl!opus!ksitze From: ksitze@nmsu.edu (Kevin Sitze) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer Subject: Re: Append menu is slow. Message-ID: Date: 11 May 89 15:06:30 GMT References: <89May9.171757edt.11077@ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu> <3014@viscous.sco.COM> Sender: news@nmsu.edu Organization: NMSU Computer Science Lines: 68 In-reply-to: jamesm@sco.COM's message of 10 May 89 23:42:21 GMT James, There's only really one major problem with using a menu for this. (don't spout off that a menu is the ONLY way to go, because it isn't) Scrolling in menus is VERY TEDIOUS to the user, because menus have a bad tendency to scroll only one item at a time. And if what you say about the size of the menus (up to 128 items) the wait is especially bad. If I had to sit around & wait for several dozen items to scroll past, my patience level with the offending program is very likely to plummet to the deepest levels of hell very quickly. I _don't_ like to wait 30-45 seconds to make one menu selection. Believe me, I have some experience here. I have a large number of fonts installed on my machine & I love Microsoft Word 3.0 because of it's scrollable font selection window. MacWrite bites the big one here (& other areas as well but I keep it around 'cause Mac TN's are written in MacWrite format...). I'd suggest that you implement the selection as follows: Just create a normal menu item (non-heiarchial) that, when selected, pops up a dialog box with a scrollable window inside. (Or even just create a window that the user can keep around for later use so (s)he doesn't have to keep selecting a menu item to make a selection.) Sort the list alphabetically (if feasable) and make alphabetic keys scroll to the proper name in the list (Look at the Apple SFGetFile dialog box and what it does on keypresses.) If you really need to use menus (for some unknown and ungodly reason) I suggest that you limit the choices & put only a scarce scattering of selections (what you or your program deems the most important ones, it's up to how you want to select the items (e.g. by most recent use, one for each letter in the alphabet, etc.)) into the actual menu & have another selection method available as outlined in the paragraph above. A really great example of what I talked about is (again) Microsoft Word 3.0. The only problem I have with their font selection is that I have to _scroll_ through their list (can't press a letter key & go to the first item that starts with that letter) Something you _always_ have to remember and incorporate into most anything you program: If the program is slow then people won't use it, and a program is as fast as it's slowest feature. People don't like to wait for things (Americans especially, I know -- I'm one), after all, why are we always so estatic when an new and faster computer is put out on the market. (Great golly! Look at that thing go! My ___ couldn't do that even half that speed!!) So do something about that amazingly slow selection (expecially if it's required more than once every ten-fifteen minutes), even _you_ might never want to use it otherwise! This goes for all you programmers out there! Where would us Mac users be if Bill A. wrote SlowDraw? -Kelesi -- ------------------------------------+------------------------------- From the Macintosh of: Kevin Sitze | Disclamer: Who the heck needs | a disclamer? After all, Dan EMail: ksitze%NMSU.edu | Quayle doesn't. SMail: 601 S. Melendres +------------------------------- Las Cruces, NM 88005 | "We have the answers, the ------------------------------------+ trouble lies in finding the "The difference between intelligence| questions..." and stupidity is that intelligence | "The information is there, has a limit." - anonymous | finding it is another story." The dolt confuses you -- more -- | - Any consultant ------------------------------------+-------------------------------