Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ames!ucsd!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!hp-pcd!uoregon!jqj From: jqj@uoregon.uoregon.edu (JQ Johnson) Newsgroups: comp.windows.misc Subject: Re: DOS & MS-windows Vs. Unix & X experience + MS-windows Flame Message-ID: <2096@uoregon.uoregon.edu> Date: 30 May 88 21:04:28 GMT References: <10799@apple.Apple.Com> <10700005@hpfclp.SDE.HP.COM> Reply-To: jqj@drizzle.UUCP (JQ Johnson) Organization: University of Oregon, Computer Science, Eugene OR Lines: 21 In article <10700005@hpfclp.SDE.HP.COM> diamant@hpfclp.SDE.HP.COM (John Diamant) writes: >> The idea of positioning the dialog box under the present position of the >> mouse is worth a try. > >Yes, it sounds like a good idea, but what do you do if the mouse is over on >the edge of the screen One standard technique in such cases is to push the current mouse position on the stack, relocate the mouse cursor to near the middle of the screen, and pop up the dialog box under the mouse. After the user has selected an item from the dialog box, remove the box and pop the mouse cursor location back to where you stole it from. Note that this approach works well for a mouse since the mouse reports delta-position rather than active position. It does not work for absolute positioning devices such as a touch screen or a tablet. If you have a touch screen, having the default be in your "current" location isn't too critical but if your pointing device is a tablet or light pen it's a real problem. Note that the idea of having the dialog box pop up with the default at the mouse cursor generalizes nicely to popup menus: in many window systems the popup menus can come up under the mouse such that the default selection is what you'll get if you just release the mouse button.