warner@orca.UUCP (Ken Warner) (02/06/85)
Gee! two responses. net.cog-eng is not dead. >Ken Warner claims that the only purpose of pop up menus (pums) is to >conserve screen space. Not quite right. I said "increase the informational capacity of the screen". You obviously don't conserve screen space by using it. >He overlooks the fact that pums are also used to reduce arm motion in >menu selection. Didn't over look this. I am not concerned with how a menu item is selected. However, you can select a menu item from a keyboard with very little arm motion. Unless you are actually touching the screen with a pointing device then it doesn't matter where the menu is as long as it produces no interferance. Conservation of physical motion is important when someone spends 40+ hours a week at it. But thats another topic. It's also why I hate mice. That ought to ruffle some feathers. >Greater resolution (or multiple screens) do NOT eliminate the >usefulness of pums. Didn't say it would. Didn't say pums were not going to be useful anymore. Just about any interface will have areas of useful application. Depends on the task at hand. >If you pick a fixed area to hold a dedicated menu, you are limited to >the number of entries you can place there, which should be limited >to avoid confusion. You could change its contents (when?), or you >could have several fixed areas. This second choice opens the question >of how the user would know which one was active. These are design issues that would be answered on a case by case basis. Same questions apply to pop-up menus. >By using a popup, you reinforce the model of particular functions >associated with particular areas of the screen (windows, objects and >other fields), .... Wait a minute! I thought pop-up menus could be brought up anywhere. >Contrary to Ken's belief about the future, multiple screens have >already been tried and generally are a second-best alternative to a >single large screen with more resolution. Who's tried them? When? Where? What were "they" doing? ... How large a screen are you talking about? I could live with a single 1 meter screen. If the resolution was 400 lines an inch. >With multiple screens (which are always going to be a more expensive >solution than a single screen, whatever the cost of the display), Doesn't hold. Computers with more memory are more expensive than computers with less memory. Does anyone want less memory? >the designer is faced with the problem of letting the user >know where to look, and potentially the more complicated interface >addressing the multiple screens. Interesting problem. I'd like to try it. >The best way to deal with multiple screens would be to treat them both >physically and logically as a single, larger screen. First, I don't mean just two screens as "both" implies. I mean as many or as few as a particular task, usr and system require. In some situations maybe multiple screens would be treated as a single screen. Ken Warner .. keep those cards and letters coming.