Squeak culture and menus

Tim Rowledge tim at sumeru.stanford.edu
Wed Nov 3 21:01:30 UTC 2004


Rob, please, if at all possible, turn off html posting.

Rob Lally <smalltalk at roblally.plus.com> wrote:

> Early UI's used them.
Not ones that I remember; but then I can't have seen them all event
back that far. Mac is actually the first one I can think of, then GEM
(anyone remember that particular horror?), JAWS (an IBM research
internal attempt at a coders desktop), then Windows. Smalltalk preceeds
all of them handily. No menubar there.

> Most current UI's use them.
Depends how you want to count. After all in the grand scheme of number
of users, only Windwos exists. All else would be considered noise on
the plot.

> Anyone designing a
> new UI would probably use them - then again Croquet hasn't, and it is
> the most recent UI I can think of.
_I_ certainly wouldn't. I don't think Jef Raskin would again, at least
not a screen menu bar.

> Most computers built with mice over
> the last couple of decades have an OS that supports them in most, if
> not all, of their applications.
"It's normal" is not always a guide to what's right or good. 

> Decent UI textbooks all recomend having menu bars, context sensitive
> popup menus and keyboard shortcuts, ideally providing three ways to
> access any functionality. Of these menu bars are generally considered
> considered most important, particularly for novices
Can't agree there. We have two obvious counter-examples to hand, RISC
OS (which has been used in schools since 1987, has no menu bars, has
had anti-aliased graphics since 88, and is still going ) and eToys (not
quite so old but probably being used in more schools than Acorn even
dreamt of). 


>   <pre wrap=""><!---->It only matters if you are keen on 'platform compliance' rather than
> 'good UI'. And that depends on the market for your work - sometimes
> platform compliance is utterly crucial, sometimes it simply doesn't
> matter.</pre>
> </blockquote>
> Anyone interested in 'platform compliance' is unlikely to find their
> home in Squeak.
Depends; we (as in TK4 project/ John & I) have just released a multipel
host windows system. Others have done various levels of platform
compliance work. 


> It matters very much if you are interested in 'good UI', as I know many
> of the Squeak contributers over the years are and have been. Usability
> is not a matter of 'platform compliance' it is a matter of
> understanding human behaviour and and activity.
Ah, having been a UI researcher (using Smalltalk) for IBM twenty-some
years ago after doing the first RCA masters degree in 'the user
interface as industrial design' I'm hardly going to disagree with that.
But I still think menubars are a sillier idea than airport departure
lounge oyster bars.


tim
--
Tim Rowledge, tim at sumeru.stanford.edu, http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim
Useful random insult:- He's not stupid; he's possessed by a retarded ghost.



More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list