beth@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Beth Christy) (10/07/85)
[Life is just a bowl.] From: gus@Shasta.ARPA, Message-ID: <658@Shasta.ARPA>: >Shif, Option, etc. click can bee used far too much on a Mac. It is just too >esasy to put a shift key conditional in the code to substitute for a more >visual interface. One interimn solution is to change the shape of the cursor >when you hold down shift where it makes a difference. [...] >My general attitude was to change the cursor whenever you >move the mouse over an area that does something different. I even have a >"no mouse" shape which appears over a "dead" area where clicks are ignored. >This sort of code is fairly easy to write, as soon as you have all the >bitmaps created. > > Gus Fernandez Now *that's* a good idea. The shift, option, ... features are far too hidden - they're about the only things on the Mac that aren't intuitive, yet they're also among the few things we have to remember without prompting (assuming we ever found out about them in the first place). Of course, it might be a bit distracting if the pointer flashed every time you hit Shift in a text editor (since Shift-Drag does something different than Drag). But I'd rather put up with a bit of distraction (or just move the pointer to the menu bar, where Shift-click doesn't behave differently) than wander through completely ignorant of useful features because I didn't happen to stumble on that section of the manual. Good idea, Gus. -- --JB (Beth Christy, U. of Chicago, ..!ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!beth) "What if the after-effect of the terrible bomb is unusual beyond belief? Wouldn't you rather the whole population had listened to somebody like the old Indian chief?" (The Roches)
sbm@arthur (Steven B. Munson) (10/08/85)
In article <1167@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>, beth@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Beth Christy) writes: > Of course, it might be a bit distracting if the pointer flashed every > time you hit Shift in a text editor.... That is why text editors should always obscure the cursor (using ObscureCursor) when the user is typing, because the cursor is in the way when it is not being used anyway. If this is done, as it is in MacWrite, there is no problem with the cursor changing shape. Steve Munson sbm@Purdue.EDU sbm@Purdue.CSNET