[comp.sys.mac.programmer] hierarchical menus, user interfaces

sg1q+@andrew.cmu.edu (Simon Peter Gatrall) (07/22/88)

This talk of hierarchiacal menus scares me.  You should have very good reasons
for using h-menus.  Anytime people go wild with these new features they end up
with messy user-interfaces.  This is not to say that h-menus are necessarily
bad, just that you should think twice before making your user interface any
more complicated than it needs to be.  After all the success of the Mac is
because of its user interface.  Pop-up menus are the same.

For an interesting comparison, look at Adobe Illustrator 88 and Aldus Freehand.
 They are an interesting contrast.  Although Illustrator is somewhat difficult
to learn, it is much cleaner that Freehand.  There are definitely trade-offs.
Freehand seems to have a lot of power, but you have to go through a maze of
dialog boxes, menus, etc. to do anything.  Neither program is perfect, (far
from it)  but Illustrator doesent need anywhere near the amount of garbadge to
do the same things.

-Simon Gatrall          sg1q+@andrew.cmu.edu