Updates

Doug Way dway at riskmetrics.com
Wed Sep 27 19:16:13 UTC 2000


Dan Ingalls wrote:
> 
> Edward P. Luwish wrote:
> >
> >Clicking in the World doesn't bring up a menu, but holding the button down a bit longer almost always produces a World Menu.  I didn't notice whether I was eToyFriendly or not, but I'll check next time.  In any case, you don't have to use the Mac VM or go past 2657 to experience problems with the World Menu.  [I always wait for Dan's announcement before jumping into the abyss].
> 
> Ahah, there is another thing going on here.  The recent changes distinguish between momentary clicks and extended clicks in the world.  This is due to the use of momentary clicks to "shake off" halos (where you don't want to bring up a world menu), and also to open the possibility of other getsures, such as dragging out a multiple selection.  In this specific case, we decided to use shift-drag, but still, that's why momentary clicks are no longer giving you the world menu.  It wouldn't be hard to make that a preference if a lot of people care.

Putting my UI-guy hat on...

I usually welcome the UI tweaks/improvements that have been made to
Squeak over the last couple of years, but I have to admit that this one
has bothered me, too.  Having to wait for a menu to appear isn't really
consistent with the rest of the Squeak UI (or any other UI for that
matter).  However, I agree that being able to easily "shake off" halos
is a good thing.

I figured that there wasn't an easy solution, since the
drag-for-multiselection capability was added, but now that you've
changed that to use shift-drag, well... :)  I think either of these two
options would be preferable to the current situation:

1. A left-button (red button) click anywhere in a Morphic world
background gets rid of any existing halos, and also brings up the World
Menu.  (The duration of the mouse click doesn't matter.)

or

2. A left-button click anywhere in a Morphic world background gets rid
of any existing halos if they exist.  If there are no halos, a
left-button click will bring up the World Menu.  So, if you have a halo
open on a morph, you'll need to click twice to open a World Menu.  (The
duration of either mouse click doesn't matter.)

I think maybe I like option #2 slightly more than option #1, but either
one would be fine.  I assume there wouldn't be any implemenation issues
with either of these.  (I could implement it myself, but I figured I'd
wait to see if it shows up in an upcoming set of updates first. :) ) 
Anyone else have thoughts on the current behavior versus #1 versus #2?

(Also, on a side note, it's especially irritating to try to shake off
the world halo if you happen to right-click in a Morphic world
background.  No amount of clicking in the background will shake it
off... you have to know to left-click on an existing morph or
SystemWindow.  It would be nice if option #1 or #2 above would also
shake off a world halo.)

- Doug Way
  dway at riskmetrics.com
  RiskMetrics Group - Software Research, Ann Arbor, MI
  http://www.riskmetrics.com





More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list