awang@isl.Stanford.EDU (Avery Wang) (02/25/90)
I am really mostly happy with the windowing system and workspace manager on the NeXT except for these two things: a minor complaint: In the browser, when I double click on a document or applicaton in the text columns, it opens up, just as when I double-click on its icon, either in the browser's single icon compartment or in a view-by-icon directory window--This is fine. What seems a little inconsistent is when I double-click on the name of a directory--Nothing happens, other than showing its contents in the column to the right in the browser. When I double click on the icon of a directory in the browser, *then* it opens up a view-by-icon window of its contents. I think that double-clicking on both the name of the directory and its icon should yield the same result, especially to be consistent with the documents and applications. bigger complaint: There should be a way to get windows to cycle from top to bottom so that if I have a messy desktop I don't have to go fishing for a window buried under 50 others. On the HP 9000's running X windows clicking on the background causes the windows to cycle from front to back. Alternatively, there could be some menu or icon that has a list of all the windows, so I need only select the one I want directly. This brings up another point--in the case of lots of menu items, it would be desirable to have scrolling menus... -Avery Wang awang@isl.stanford.edu
rca@cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony) (02/26/90)
The only real complaint I have so far with the GUI is the following: I like to put the menu of an app at a place where it can't be seen (i.e. off the screen). This way it does not take away a lot of 'expensive' screen space. Hitting the right mouse button is anyway much more convenient that searching for the menu somewhere on the screen. Now the problem: If I click the right mouse button close to the window boarder the menu just gets clipped, but does not move up so that it is accessible as a whole. This is solved better in X (sorry, that is true..) This is especially annoying with programs like Mathematice which has LONG menues. So you have to start thinking on where to move the mouse to before you click for the menue. Another bad thing: you can not tear off a submenue, if you got the main menu by clicking the right mouse button. Moving on the submenu title and dragging should do it... Ronald ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - Bernhard Shaw | rca@cs.brown.edu or antony@browncog.bitnet
dorner@pequod.cso.uiuc.edu (Steve Dorner) (02/27/90)
In article <30633@brunix.UUCP> rca@cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony) writes: >I like to put the menu of an app at a place where it can't be >seen (i.e. off the screen). >Another bad thing: you can not tear off a submenue, if you got >the main menu by clicking the right mouse button. I also don't like the menus in the upper-left corner. For some apps, however, you REALLY want tear-offs to work (WriteNow, for example). I've made a compromise: % dwrite NXMenuX 1053 % dwrite NXMenuY " 20" This puts the menu at the bottom right of the screen. Since I can't move the dock out of that corner anyway (why, NeXT?), this wastes no unwasted space. Since just the title of the menu is showing, most of the icon at that location is also visible. AND, when I want to tear off a menu, I can drag the menus further onto the screen, do my thing, and put them back in the corner. It would definitely be better if we could get tear-offs from right-button menus, though. -- Steve Dorner, U of Illinois Computing Services Office Internet: s-dorner@uiuc.edu UUCP: {convex,uunet}!uiucuxc!dorner