john13@garfield.MUN.EDU (John Russell) (12/29/88)
In article <10746@s.ms.uky.edu> david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) writes: ]In article <1489@umbc3.UMD.EDU> cs374326@umbc3.UMD.EDU (Peter Johansson) writes: ]>How much research has actually gone into discovering what Joe Schmoe, ]>small and medium sized business owner, wants on his desk? Does he want ]>a gas-plasma-wall-hanging-display unit and an infra-red-input-device? ]>I find it very interesting that most of the messages here from developers ]>and programmers, and there is NIL in the way of input from the end user. ].. ]>I'm also curious just what percentage of the end-user computing market ]>the graphical interface has captured, and what their opinions of it are. ]>After all, these computers *are* for "the rest of us." I'm certainly not ]>saying that computer programmers (read: non-end-users) should be limited ]>to 80x24 text screens, it's just that from what I see, it's the programmers ]>using the new hypermedia, and the (majority?) of users are left with their ]>kludgy operating systems ans displays (?) This user prefers a nice unix ]>$ prompt, emacs, C, TeX (LaTex), and a vt100. Then again, I'm not making ]>millions of $$$ either. ] ]I don't know how much of that kind of research has gone on, but how ]might it be done in the first place? You go around asking people ]if they want mice & windows & such? I don't think that'll work because ]you'd get caught in the ] ] if all you have is a hammer all the world looks like a nail ] ]problem. That is, right now the common demoninator is an 80x24 screen ]that you type commands at. Oh and it's also PC-DOS, single tasking, ]and so forth. ] ]The hammer problem cuts both ways too ... the mouse & windows are not ]the be-all-end-all of computer interfaces either. (I added the Amiga and Atari groups to this thread -- John) There certainly has been a substantial amount of research on the topic. I suspect it's a favourite of grad students who don't like N-dimensional matrix theory :-). First of all, I've never liked the desktop metaphor much. My desk is completely taken up by a computer system, printer and floppy disks :-) ! The contrived nature of desktops appeals most to people who are locked in to that way of thinking, by years of experience in the conventional office environment. The window concept is IMHO the best jumping-off point for novices, who can move on to specialized ideas like desktops after they have a grasp of the basics. I wonder if the NeXT interface builder has the potential to condense the intial learning stage, by presenting a number of different metaphors for interaction in such a way that the pattern becomes apparent? That is, no matter what sort of action you're performing you need a way to do X, Y, and Z, and these capabilities are always present in some form. At the same time some people need A, other people don't but they do need B and C. A good way (I've found) to introduce the "window" metaphor is to take someone accustomed to the VT100, Csh prompt etc. and present them with a full-screen window running the same setup. Then after they see that the new environment is a superset of the old one, not a flawed replacement, present them with some circumstance where keyboard-based interaction is clumsy -- move the vi cursor to such-and-such a spot, or run two processes that both want to do screen output simultaneously -- and show how having a mouse makes it easier, having windows makes it possible. For the complete neophyte it's trickier. They don't know the good points and bad points of any interface. Very often (eg in a student environment) they may not be accustomed to a desktop like the Mac's, and so they have to learn that at the same time as they learn the general ideas of mouse/icon- based interaction. For them it's usually quick and easy to pick up since they don't have so many preconceived ideas, but I think locking them into one particular mold ("to delete, toss things in the trashcan") is not as good in the long run as giving them a broader perspective of things ("deleting files or other objects is something you'll always need to be able to do, and every system should allow you to by some method. One way, used by the desktop metaphor, is to display a trashcan into which the objects to be deleted can be 'dropped'."). John -- "If you steal all money, kids not be able to BUY TOYS!" -- Saturday morning cartoon character explaining why theft is bad
richard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton) (12/29/88)
John Russell spewed:
>(I added the Amiga and Atari groups to this thread -- John)
How will we ever repay you ?
Tomorrows lesson, class, will be the Followup-to: field.
Class dismissed.
--
I got a lump of coal.
richard@gryphon.COM {b'bone}!gryphon!richard gryphon!richard@elroy.jpl.nasa.govpeter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (12/29/88)
Just being a troublemaker... What object on the desktop are pull-down menus a metaphor for? -- Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva `-_-' Hackercorp. ...texbell!sugar!peter, or peter@sugar.uu.net 'U`
john13@garfield.MUN.EDU (John Russell) (12/31/88)
In article <3173@sugar.uu.net>, peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: > Just being a troublemaker... > What object on the desktop are pull-down menus a metaphor for? Exactly. Although menus will probably need to be kept just for compatibility for people who are used to them, WB 1.4 should also include a completely iconic way to perform both the current and new menu functions. Perhaps a DPaint-style menu strip down the side? Across the top? Something that you can't miss seeing; if you don't understand it, it remains apparent to you, so eventually you ask someone else what it's for. (This would be an metaphor for the "string around the figure" so popular in business offices :-). Besides making the functions more visible and more accessible, this would allow for use of the help key -- if the mouse is over a special-action gadget, a WB window pops up containing a clear explanation of the gadget's function. If over a disk icon the window says "this is a disk icon, here are some of the things you can do with it" (dragging, opening, etc). With similar online help for other icon types. John -- "If you steal all money, kids not be able to BUY TOYS!" -- Saturday morning cartoon character explaining why theft is bad
peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (12/31/88)
In article <5057@garfield.MUN.EDU>, john13@garfield.MUN.EDU (John Russell) writes: > In article <3173@sugar.uu.net>, peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: > > Just being a troublemaker... > > What object on the desktop are pull-down menus a metaphor for? > Exactly. Although menus will probably need to be kept just for compatibility > for people who are used to them, WB 1.4 should also include a completely > iconic way to perform both the current and new menu functions. You have it backwards. WB 1.4 should stop trying to look like the Mac and go to pop-up menus. And dump the trashcan icon... it's really pretty daft. -- Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva `-_-' Hackercorp. ...texbell!sugar!peter, or peter@sugar.uu.net 'U`
john13@garfield.MUN.EDU (John Russell) (01/02/89)
In article <3193@sugar.uu.net> Peter da Silva writes: > >You have it backwards. WB 1.4 should stop trying to look like the Mac and go >to pop-up menus. I've never seen any "control gadgets" on the Mac desktop, just icons for objects (and I had to squint hard enough to make those out! :-). I was thinking in terms of the menu structure itself providing roadblocks, eg. a terse one-word identifier and no easy way to provide extended help. Looking at the Workbench menus now (putting myself in the shoes of Joe Beginner) I see options called "Info", "Initialize", "Clean Up", and "Snapshot" all of which are initially ghosted. If I don't know about selecting an icon by single-clicking before selecting a menu item I'm stuck (no way to get feedback on why they don't work). At the very least they should not be ghosted but output a titlebar message saying "single click an icon first". Even if I know how to select them, their meaning is non-obvious. What sort of pop-up menus do you envision that wouldn't have the same problems? I can see a pop-up menu that contained only choices applicable to the currently selected icon... but there should still be some way for someone to tell what "Snapshot" does, built in to the Workbench, before he selects it. Hmmm, if there was a way to print a one-line summary of each item as the menu select box moved over it... of course popup menus using windows don't need to lock up the whole screen as you make a selection. The popup menu idea has merit, but isn't part of the standard set of tools Amiga users are experienced with. Introducing them in Intuition would be a good idea, although the bugs probably wouldn't be ironed out in time to really integrate them into the Workbench. On the other hand lots of popular Amiga programs have gadget strips. I find them easy to use (if not overdone), and they should be relatively simple to add to the Workbench program without breaking anything. John PS But I agree that popup menus are preferable to pulldown ones (even wrote some myself, but that was on the ST). -- "If you steal all money, kids not be able to BUY TOYS!" -- Saturday morning cartoon character explaining why theft is bad
bwk@mbunix.mitre.org (Barry W. Kort) (01/02/89)
In article <3173@sugar.uu.net> peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) asks: > What object on the desktop are pull-down menus a metaphor for? Have you never ordered a pizza, sub, or Chinese orgy while working late at the office? --Barry Kort
david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) (01/03/89)
In article <5059@garfield.MUN.EDU> john13@garfield.UUCP (John Russell) writes: >In article <3193@sugar.uu.net> Peter da Silva writes: >> >>You have it backwards. WB 1.4 should stop trying to look like the Mac and go >>to pop-up menus. > >I've never seen any "control gadgets" on the Mac desktop, just icons for >objects (and I had to squint hard enough to make those out! :-). > >I was thinking in terms of the menu structure itself providing roadblocks, >eg. a terse one-word identifier and no easy way to provide extended help. Yes I agree, and I have my own suggestions for how this could be re-done A problem I see is that when you've selected a pull-down menu option there just isn't much you can do in terms of interaction. You already have the mouse button pressed y'see. The basic change I propose is to make the menu be a full-fledged window with resize & kill gadgets in 'em. This window will have to know when the mouse pointer is inside it and scroll around in the menu as necessary. Perhaps there could be some program available in the system which handles menus that you describe in some file and passes back an indicator of what was selected. But I don't know what mechanism would be good for doing it, but of course it would be best if it looked to the programmer as if it was a call into a library. Anyway. Then you can change the interaction from .. click up in the menu bar and hold the click (you don't have many options at this point) .. to .. click up in the menu bar, wait for the menu to pop up, scroll around in the menu, when ready click on a menu choice. The advantage of this is that you don't reduce the number of options that the user has. You also can extend how menus work. The menu could possibly stick around for awhile, saving some time when you have lots of things to do out of the same menu. You could also implement help somehow. The suggestion that comes to mind is to have a number of gadgets around the edge of this window, the ones above plus help and "do-it" gadgets. You click once on a menu choice, then on either the help or do-it gadget. Help pops up a window describing the menu choice. "do-it" does the menu choice. A double-click on the gadget means "do-it". Unix PC users might recognize some of these suggestions. (How do I formally submit suggestions for features ??? I'm pretty sure the right people at CA will see this, but this isn't a formal submission ....) -- <-- David Herron; an MMDF guy <david@ms.uky.edu> <-- ska: David le casse\*' {rutgers,uunet}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET <-- Now I know how Zonker felt when he graduated ... <-- Stop! Wait! I didn't mean to!
fgd3@jc3b21.UUCP (Fabbian G. Dufoe) (01/04/89)
Don't forget the mechanism in the present menu method which allows you
to select more than one item from the menu by clicking on the item with the
left button while continuing to hold down the right button.
--Fabbian Dufoe
350 Ling-A-Mor Terrace South
St. Petersburg, Florida 33705
813-823-2350
UUCP: ...codas!usfvax2!jc3b21!fgd3
...uunet!pdn!jc3b21!fgd3pds@quintus.uucp (Peter Schachte) (01/04/89)
In article <5059@garfield.MUN.EDU> john13@garfield.UUCP (John Russell) writes: >I was thinking in terms of the menu structure itself providing roadblocks, >eg. a terse one-word identifier and no easy way to provide extended help. > >Hmmm, if there was a way to print a one-line summary of each item as the >menu select box moved over it... This is just how the Xerox lisp machines work. There is a standard little window called the prompt window, which any user program is welcome to print into. And their menu package allows a help message to be associated with each menu item. When the mouse is held over a menu item for about half a second, the help message is printed in the prompt window. Works great. [ Aside: I wish more Amiga types, especially DOGS, had some experience with the Xerox lisp machines environment. They really did a lot very well. For example, I was able to write a fairly small program that forced all my icons to line up neatly with nearby windows and icons when I moved them (all windows can be iconified!). The Amiga kernel is far superior to the Xerox system is many ways, but their windowing environment is hard to beat. And if you want to see a REALLY good way to handle multiple screens, take a look at their ROOMS system. Drool, drool. And they still have the nicest Lisp code editor I've seen.] One way to do this on the Amiga would be to allow the association of a help message (limited to about 80 chars) with each menu item, and when the mouse is held over an item for half a second, the message is written into the screen's title bar until the mouse moves out of that item. You could also associate a message with whole menus, and when the mouse lingers over the menu title in the menu bar, its help text would be displayed. I do think it would be A Good Thing to have a standard intuition library call that would display a message in the screen's title bar, so any program could display help messages in a single, consistent place (so the ^&%$%& help key could do something intelligent for people). The problem with this is knowing when to take the help message back down. I suppose it could be left up until the mouse moves more than a few pixels or a keypress is made. Something like that. >of course popup menus using windows don't >need to lock up the whole screen as you make a selection. You'd probably want them to lock the screen, so the menus could be cheaply taken down. You don't want all the windows the menu covers to have to redraw themselves. A few simple refresh windows would make popup menus very, very painful. >On the other hand lots of popular Amiga programs have gadget strips. I find >them easy to use (if not overdone), and they should be relatively simple to >add to the Workbench program without breaking anything. Gadget strips are basically a kind of fixed (as opposed to popup) menu. The advantage of fixed menus is that they are always in the same place, so one develops muscle memory to be able to hit the desired item with a minimum of thought. The disadvantages are that they take up real estate, which on a 640x200 or 640x400 screen is very precious. And with a fixed menu, you have to move your mouse to the menu. A popup menu comes to you. Pulldown menus have the advantage that they don't waste the space, but the disadvantages of always having to move to select an item, and the added step of pulling down the menu. Having used all three types, I like popups best for most things. -Peter Schachte pds@quintus.uucp ..!sun!quintus!pds
dykimber@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Daniel Yaron Kimberg) (01/05/89)
In article <910@quintus.UUCP> pds@quintus.UUCP (Peter Schachte) writes: >[ Aside: I wish more Amiga types, especially DOGS, had some experience > with the Xerox lisp machines environment. They really did a lot very > well.... > The Amiga kernel is > far superior to the Xerox system is many ways, but their windowing > environment is hard to beat. And if you want to see a REALLY good way > to handle multiple screens, take a look at their ROOMS system. Drool, > drool. And they still have the nicest Lisp code editor I've seen.] Strong agreement here. The Xerox Lisp environment, as a whole, is one of the nicest environments I've worked in. [don't ask me about the (&#$#$&*#($*& other aspects of the machine] I'm not crazy about the prompt window idea, actually, but I don't mind it too much. Bear in mind, though, that the amiga screen is currently much smaller, and windows can't go off the edge, without using something like vscreen. A lot of the things that work real nicely when you can see two big DEdit windows and your application window at the same time would be impossible on the amiga's relatively cramped screen. In any case, if someone looked at the pop-up menus on the xerox and tried to make sure the amiga had the same functionality, it would be a much easier machine to use. -Dan
wcs@skep2.ATT.COM (Bill.Stewart.[ho95c]) (01/05/89)
Peter da Silva writes: > Just being a troublemaker... > What object on the desktop are pull-down menus a metaphor for? Getting the manual down off the shelf .... I use vi instead of emacs because I learned it first and my fingers know how to do things most emacs-users can't do without keeping the manual around*. But I'd rather use a Macintosh, since I seldom have to remember anything; I can just do the obvious and it works. (It's especially critical since the places I use Macs don't tend to have the manuals handy.) I'd rather have pop-up menus and multi-button mouse, but the Mac is close enough. Most of the Mac-haters I know are touch-typists who don't like moving their hands off the keyboard - the head-mouse may be able to let them get the best of both worlds. When I'm using the Mac for a while, I tend to do most of my work by keystrokes, but pull-downs are still there when I need a crutch. Wish the implementation was better and there were more keys ..... The Mac desktop isn't really enough for me - I've gotten spoiled by large multi-window screens with multi-tasking. On the other hand, multiple fonts and more-or-less WYSIWYG are such a win over 24x80 monospace that I'll happily tolerate it as long as I'm using it as a writing/design tool rather than a programming environment. --- * I'm not trying to restart Editor Wars here - this is just a response to the people who say menus and pull-downs are for people with small brains who won't read the manual. I'm happy to use systems that usually do what I want, so I can use the mental effort on the problems I'm trying to solve, or on the more obscure parts of the work, rather than wasting my time getting the typesetting to look decent. Bill -- # Thanks; # Bill Stewart, AT&T Bell Labs 2G218 Holmdel NJ 201-949-0705 ho95c.att.com!wcs # # News. Don't talk to me about News.
maujt@warwick.ac.uk (Richard J Cox) (01/10/89)
In article <390@skep2.ATT.COM> wcs@skep2.ATT.COM (Bill.Stewart.[ho95c]) writes: ... >Most of the Mac-haters I know are touch-typists who don't >like moving their hands off the keyboard - the head-mouse >may be able to let them get the best of both worlds. ... I'm different: I'm a Mac hater, I'm not a touch typest, and I don't mind moving my fingers off the keyboard. The reason I hate the Mac is its user interface - it forces you to conform too much, ie it is not customisable enough. When I use UNIX I use tcsh (csh+command line editing via emacs style CTRL chars) with >40 aliases, highly customised emacs etc.... - RC /*--------------------------------------------------------------------------*/ JANET: maujt@uk.ac.warwick.cu BITNET: maujt%uk.ac.warwick.cu@UKACRL ARPA: maujt@cu.warwick.ac.uk UUCP: maujt%cu.warwick.ac.uk@ukc.uucp Richard Cox, 84 St. Georges Rd, Coventry, CV1 2DL; UK PHONE: (0203) 520995
uucibg@sw1e.UUCP (3929] Brian Gilstrap) (01/11/89)
In article <77@poppy.warwick.ac.uk> maujt@warwick.ac.uk (Richard J Cox) writes: > >I'm different: I'm a Mac hater, I'm not a touch typest, and I don't mind >moving my fingers off the keyboard. >The reason I hate the Mac is its user interface - it forces you to conform >too much, ie it is not customisable enough. When I use UNIX I use tcsh >(csh+command line editing via emacs style CTRL chars) with >40 aliases, >highly customised emacs etc.... > Hmmm....I certainly won't argue that the standard Finder-style interface does not provide customization. I also won't argue that customization can be nice (being a unix programmer, I strongly agree). However, the Mac has many options for customization, including several general macro packages such as QuicKeys, Tempo II, and Apple's MacroMaker. Many of these packages let you make your macros apply to all programs or just a particular program. Also, many of programs out now allow you to create macros within the scope of the program. You might want to take a second look at the Mac, if customization is your real complaint. Of course, the die-hard Mac-ites (I'm not one) might argue the appropriateness of using such macros. Personally, I think extensibility is the key to a long software product lifetime, so in that sense I agree with you. However, I own a MacII and I'm generaly quite happy with the applications, so in that sense I guess I have to disagree with you. By the way, this seems to have digressed, so I've directed follow-ups to comp.misc for lack of a better choice ( the ppl in comp.sys.mac[.programmer] have already "got the religion" so we'd get into ego-bashing if we moved there :-) Disclaimer: I'm not affliated with Apple or any company that creates or markets Macintosh software. I am a generally satisfied customer, though I'll be more satisfied when I've got Unix on my machine. :-) >- RC > >/*--------------------------------------------------------------------------*/ >JANET: maujt@uk.ac.warwick.cu BITNET: maujt%uk.ac.warwick.cu@UKACRL >ARPA: maujt@cu.warwick.ac.uk UUCP: maujt%cu.warwick.ac.uk@ukc.uucp >Richard Cox, 84 St. Georges Rd, Coventry, CV1 2DL; UK PHONE: (0203) 520995 Brian R. Gilstrap One Bell Center Rm 17-G-4 ...!ames!killer!texbell!sw1e!uucibg St. Louis, MO 63101 ...!bellcore!texbell!sw1e!uucibg (314) 235-3929
jmpiazza@sunybcs.uucp (Joseph M. Piazza) (01/12/89)
In article <77@poppy.warwick.ac.uk> maujt@warwick.ac.uk (Richard J Cox) writes: >In article <390@skep2.ATT.COM> wcs@skep2.ATT.COM (Bill.Stewart.[ho95c]) writes: >... >>Most of the Mac-haters I know are touch-typists who don't >>like moving their hands off the keyboard - the head-mouse >>may be able to let them get the best of both worlds. >... > >I'm different: I'm a Mac hater, I'm not a touch typest, and I don't mind >moving my fingers off the keyboard. >The reason I hate the Mac is its user interface - it forces you to conform >too much, ie it is not customisable enough. When I use UNIX I use tcsh >(csh+command line editing via emacs style CTRL chars) with >40 aliases, >highly customised emacs etc.... Hmmm. I'm forced to disagree. There is an excellant macro package available for the Mac called QuicKeys which lets you assign virtually ANY (in Amiga parlance) mouse/requestor/gadget/etc combo and assign it to virtually ANY keystroke. For instance, I use a shift-control-option-command-del combination (on my extended keyboard) to perform a system reset (under MultiFinder). I now have some semblance of harmony when moving between the Amiga, the Mac, and Unix. This hasn't always been true, by the way. Flip side, joe piazza --- Cogito ergo equus sum. CS Dept. SUNY at Buffalo 14260 UUCP: ..!{ames,boulder,decvax,rutgers}!sunybcs!jmpiazza GEnie: jmpiazza BITNET: jmpiazza@sunybcs.BITNET Internet: jmpiazza@cs.Buffalo.edu > >JANET: maujt@uk.ac.warwick.cu BITNET: maujt%uk.ac.warwick.cu@UKACRL >ARPA: maujt@cu.warwick.ac.uk UUCP: maujt%cu.warwick.ac.uk@ukc.uucp >Richard Cox, 84 St. Georges Rd, Coventry, CV1 2DL; UK PHONE: (0203) 520995