Re: RE : Horizontal menus.

[Chad Hardin]

Ahh, the infamous menu topic.

The one thing I don't like about the NeXT style menu is that it harder
to "hit" the menu items with the cursor.  Remember that we are trying
to slam the curson to the edge of the screen to grab menus fast.  Yet,
because text is (generally) horizontal, the menu items themselves
present a small, hart to hit target.

We all know that Horiz Top of the screen menus are good because they
are very easy to hit with the mouse since they contain an infinite
amount of vertical space.  Plus, text is hozizontal, which means we
have this nice wide area for each submenu to hit.

I think we can agree that, in light of these reasonings, horiz menus
are better.  BUT! you say, in the vertical NeXT  menu style the menu is
actually at the closest point, even easier to hit than a horiz menu! 
Of course we are talking about the right click menu.  Yes, it is a nice
thing, but there is no reason it cant be available in the horiz menu
style as well!

What I hate about the OS X version of the horiz menu is that the
extreme left and right edges of the menu bar are "dead" space, there is
nothing to click there!  There is the Apple menu there on the left
side, but you actually have to move the mouse in 20 pixels or so to hit
it.  Why the hell Apple would do that  is beyond me but let's please
not replicate it.


Chadio,

World famous slacker



Dennis Leeuw wrote:
> Stefan Urbanek wrote:
>
> > On 2003-05-27 09:00:06 +0200 Björn Giesler <giesler@ira.uka.de> wrote:
> >
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > On Tuesday 27 May 2003 05:19, Jason Clouse wrote:
> > > > My impression is that people are very attached to their choice of menu
> > > > style.  NeXT fans probably won't ever want to dock their menu upstairs. And
> > > > those who slant toward the Apple way of doing things wouldn't want
> > > > to have to go to the trouble of docking their menus.
> > > >       
> > > I agree. I think this is something which should probably go into
> > > Preferences.app, since it's a decision that will probably be made once and
> > > stay that way forever; personally, I wouldn't want to change menu styles on a
> > > per-app basis.
> > >
> > > That being said, here's my ¤.02: Although I'm a fan of Apple's menu bar,
> > > what's really nice is NeXT's right-click menu, where you get the entire menu
> > > (vertical style) with a right click on any app window. It's fast, and you get
> > > it without moving the mouse at all. Would it be possible to have the menu bar
> > > and keep the right-click menu?
> > >
> > >     
> > Yes, if we agree on common menu structure. If we want to have both, horizontal an vertical menus, there should be only one structure of the menu and that means dropping of original NeXT style. New strcture should rather follow horizontal menu structure, that means:
> > 1. allowing only submenu entries in the root menu
> > 2. inclusion of application menu (with quit and hide)
> > 3. having Preferences, Help, ... in the application menu or some other place than appmenu->info (open to discussion)
> > 4. ... other things i do not remember now
> >
> > If we agree on some common menu structure for horizonal and vertical menu, then this war is over. There will be no need for designing two menu interfaces and both caps can be happy of using their style of menu.
> >
> > I do like next interface, however I am against sticking with it forewer. I think that it is only a matter of compromise and will (to change).
> >   
> I tried to stay out of this discussion, but since it leaves the impression on this list that most are in favour of being able to use horizontal menus, I'd like to say I am not. To prevent a flame war I would also like to say that everybody is free in his/her choice of
> using menus the way they want them to be, but to adjust an interface just to make horizontal menus happen, is in my, not so humble, opinion not a good idea.
>
> Regards,
>
> Dennis
>
>
>
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