Re: [Stepmenus-discuss] smooth mousing

[Geoff R. <va...@im...>]

On Mar 21, 2005, at 5:26 AM, shr...@ad... wrote:

> This is very nice, thank you. Two things I still don"t like about OS X 
> vs NEXTSTEP are the missing tear-off menus and the right-sided scroll 
> bars.

I hope that StepMenus will be able to solve the first part for you.  I 
agree that if someone could figure out how to put the scroll bar on the 
right, that'd be great.  I didn't even know about that until I was 
doing some research for this project, and once I did I found myself 
constantly irritated that I had to mouse over to the far side to get at 
the scroll bar.  It was even worse once I got StepMenus working and 
parked the menu just to the left of the window.

I wonder if, by any chance, OS X targeted to locales with right-to-left 
writing puts the scroll bar on the left?  Someone should check into 
that.

> If I recall correctly, on NS, the menu would be activated by the 
> hovering presence of the mouse--submenus appearing automatically as 
> you moused over the list. This results in one less click to get things 
> started.
>
> Also, the submenus would not be free standing unless you grabbed them 
> by the title bar and "tore" them off. The would simply appear next to 
> the menu item with a hover and disappear when the mouse moved away. 
> Again, one less click. The whole menu could be explored simply by 
> moving the mouse, no clicks were required. Once a menu was detached 
> the close button would appear.

I'm still working on getting the interaction with the menus right.  I 
think the tear-off of menus is working how you describe, it's just a 
little non-obvious since there is not a way (that I have found) to add 
the close button to an existing window, so all the menus get it.  If 
you move a submenu with it's title bar it should (assuming everything 
is working right) stay on the screen until you hit its close button, 
just like in NeXT.  I do like your suggestion of a hover mode, I'll try 
and make that an option for the next version.

> Also, I think the top of the submenus were at the same level as the 
> main menu title bar. (yes,  you occasionally had to mouse all the way 
> from the bottom of a main menu item to the top of a short submenu so 
> this approach does have a functional disadvantage).

I have been thinking about adding that as a preference for those who 
want 1:1 with the NeXT feel, and maybe give the menus the NeXT look if 
they're feeling especially nostalgic.

Keep those suggestions coming.

-- Geoff