Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!ncar!oddjob!uwvax!speedy!engber
From: engber@speedy.cs.wisc.edu (Mike Engber)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: defaults in hierarchical menus
Summary: why not?
Keywords: hierarchical menus
Message-ID: <5969@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
Date: 13 Jul 88 14:19:23 GMT
Sender: news@spool.cs.wisc.edu
Reply-To: engber@speedy.cs.wisc.edu (Mike Engber)
Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept
Lines: 19

Now that hierarchical menus are becoming widely used, I find that I'm having
to move the mouse excessively to make menu selections. This is especially
irritating when there is one item is the sub-menu that used most of the time.
(Don't tell me about command equivalents. There are only so many that can
 done with one hand.)

What I would like to see is a default selection. One possibility is to
have the first item in a sub-menu selected if you release the mouse in its
parent menu item. Since this may not be appropriate for all h-menus, it should
be optional. H-menus that have defaults could indicate this by highlight the
default item along with the parent.

I would argue that this is consistent with the Mac interface - when I release
the mouse in a menu, I want something to happen.

Does anyone see any problems with this? Is there some way I could easily
implement this in my programs or will I have to hope that Apple picks up
on it?

-ME