Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!wuarchive!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!agate!ucbvax!hoptoad!tim
From: tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Popupmenu CDEF
Message-ID: <9390@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: 24 Dec 89 01:53:55 GMT
References: <3379@hub.UUCP> <9376@hoptoad.uucp> <50039@bbn.COM>
Reply-To: tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney)
Organization: Eclectic Software, San Francisco
Lines: 43

In article <9376@hoptoad.uucp> tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney) writes:
>|The claim is that pop-ups
>|don't exhibit the itemless scrolling behavior as long as they're used
>|correctly.  I must disagree strongly.  Most dialogs should be modeless
>|and have drag bars.  If you do this, there is no way to allow
>|legitimate dragging while preventing the pop-up from being close to the
>|bottom of the screen, creating this obnoxious behavior.

In article <50039@bbn.COM> levin@BBN.COM (Joel B Levin) writes:
>I assume you are referring to the way popups have of allocating
>sufficiently large rectangles that are mostly full of whitespace if
>the top end of the menu is initially selected while being popped up at
>the bottom of the screen, for example.

Not exactly.  I'm referring to the fact that if the popup is very close
to the bottom of the screen, then you get a short menu consisting of
nothing but an up arrow and a down arrow, with no menu items displayed
or selectable.  Pretty obnoxious.

>I agree that it is not
>preventable with the current standard methods, and I'd add that it's
>not necessarily a bad thing if it is required, as it seems to be now,
>that (a) the mouse not be moved and (b) the programmer be allowed to
>start the menu at any specified item.

True of the behavior you mean; not true of the behavior I mean, which
is A Bad Thing no matter how you slice it.

>As a user, I find the Suntools method much more disconcerting: If the
>menu doesn't have enough room to pop up, the current mouse position is
>moved _by the system_ so that there will be enough room for the menu.

Ouch.  But then, Suntools is a pain in the ass all around.  Still,
you'd think even it would be friendly enough not to jump the mouse
around without warning.
-- 
Tim Maroney, Mac Software Consultant, sun!hoptoad!tim, tim@toad.com

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