Squeak culture and menus

lex at cc.gatech.edu lex at cc.gatech.edu
Thu Nov 4 14:10:25 UTC 2004


Blake <blake at kingdomrpg.com> wrote:
> On the other hand, had there been a system-wide menu bar for Squeak, I  
> would probably have been able to remember how to access SqueakMap the  
> other day--unless it was context sensitive, in which case I would've had  
> the same problem.

You access the system-wide Squeak menu by using the "context" of the
world.  That is, click anywhere on the desktop and there is your
system-wide menu.

Putting it at the top of the screen doesn't help figure out where in the
submenus is SqueakMap.  You get the same nested submenus problem no
matter where the menu is located.

I agree on the difficulty when menus get nested deeply.  It drives me
nuts.  The weird pseudo-conventions floating around only help a little. 
Why are "print" and "exit" under the "file" menu?  Why is "preferences"
or "options" under "edit"?  And if you have a preferences window, why
are there separate options under an "options" menu that aren't in the
preferences window?

Ugh!  Menus don't confuse people.  People who write crappy menu layouts
confuse people.  Granted, that's everyone.  I can't really think of a
program that has menus that are easy to follow, and that includes the
occasional menus that I have contributed to (contributed to, not
designed -- these kudzu monsters were not designed!).  Can anyone think
of a single counterexample to cheer me up?  Are there any good menus,
anywhere?

Lex



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