Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!teknowledge-vaxc!sri-unix!quintus!pds
From: pds@quintus.uucp (Peter Schachte)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Deeply Nested Menus (Re: YAWS (Yet Another Workbench Suggestion))
Summary: Pop up submenus when mouse moves to the right
Message-ID: <138@quintus.UUCP>
Date: 24 Jun 88 22:12:36 GMT
References: <2669@utah-gr.UUCP> <2148@sugar.UUCP> <2188@ur-tut.UUCP> <2467@amiga.UUCP> <2315@antique.UUCP>
Sender: news@quintus.UUCP
Reply-To: pds@quintus.UUCP (Peter Schachte)
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Inc.
Lines: 27

In article <2315@antique.UUCP> vax135!cjp (Charles Poirier) writes:
>In article <2467@amiga.UUCP> jimm@cloyd.UUCP (Jim Mackraz) writes:
>>Other things that would be nice:
>>-don't pop down submenus when user is just rolling down through the items
>
>I agree, this is annoying.  How about delaying the submenu pop-down
>until the mouse has been over the parent menu item for a minimum time,
>like for instance, use the double-click delay time from Preferences?

Unfortunately, this introduces a pause in using submenus.  I think you
would find this distracting, even if it only was a fraction of a second.
Why not pop up submenus as soon as the mouse moves a few pixels to the
right when over an item with subitems?  You could also pop up the
submenu when the mouse lingers on an item, if you like.

Speaking of pausing over menu items, the Xerox Lisp window system has a
really nice feature that I haven't seen in any of its imitators:  a
message window.  On that system, if you hold over a menu item for more
than a second or so, a message is put into this window saying briefly
what would happen if you selected this menu item.  This is REALLY nice:
self-documenting menus!  On the amiga, the help message could go into
the screen's (or window's?) title bar.  A bit small, but better than
nothing.

-Peter Schachte
pds@quintus.uucp
..!sun!quintus!pds