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From: vishniac@wanginst.UUCP (Ephraim Vishniac)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Chuqui's enhancement(?) to user interface
Message-ID: <1153@wanginst.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 30-Sep-85 07:57:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: wanginst.1153
Posted: Mon Sep 30 07:57:38 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 2-Oct-85 20:32:24 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: Wang Institute, Tyngsboro, Ma.  01879
Lines: 38

Chuq: I tried to send this to you directly, but it was returned as
undeliverable after a week's delay.
-------------------real message starts here-----------------------
References: <3281@nsc.UUCP>

My immediate response to your idea (active menubar items) is that it's
sufficiently confusing to novices that one ought to look around for
alternatives.  One alternative does come to mind:

In many programs that I like the design of (not necessarily Mac programs),
shift-whatever means "do some obvious extension of whatever."  For example,
to scroll by screenfuls, you click in the grey region of the scrollbar.
To scroll by pages, I suggest you should shift-click in the grey region of
the scrollbar.  To go to an extremity of your document, you should
option-click (shift-option-click?) in the grey region of the scroll bar.

I like this kind of design for several reasons.  First, and extremely
important, is that it does not clutter the screen.  Instead, it extends
the power of existing controls in a logical way.  Second, it's very 
easy to standardize, and nothing surprising will happen if you try to
use it in applications that don't support it.  In fact, nothing
very surprising will happen if you do it by accident.  Third, it's not a
*change* to the existing user interface, but a (consistent, I hope)
extension of it.

I'll be very interested to hear the results of your survey.  I hope to
see a response that exhibits the innate sensitivity of Mac users to 
clean, elegant design.  I fear a plague of kluges.  I'll leave it to
our mutual audience to decide which category I've contributed to.

Ephraim Vishniac
  [apollo, bbncca, cadmus, decvax, harvard, linus, masscomp]!wanginst!vishniac
  vishniac%Wang-Inst@Csnet-Relay

-- 
Ephraim Vishniac
  [apollo, bbncca, cadmus, decvax, harvard, linus, masscomp]!wanginst!vishniac
  vishniac%Wang-Inst@Csnet-Relay