Hello all,

In porting old apps to the Siren framework, I'm rethinking my old MultiMenu
extensions. I'd like to describe the current version and solicit groupthink
on other possible interaction techniques.

The basic extension is that controllers (or their editors) can maintain an
ordered collection of menus (a de-composed yellow button menu), and that
simple extended menu controller interaction techniques allow users to quickly
step through them. This is not unlike Squeak's "more..." ParagraphEditor menu
item, but it makes it easier for the user to "cycle through" a list of
smaller menus (which might correspond to the categories of hierarchical menus
or the items in a menu bar).

The three interface techniques I've used are:
	Key-step: pressing any keyboard key (e.g., <SPACE>) steps to the next menu
	Multi-click: clicking on the "border" of a menu steps it; and
	Mouse-chord: yellow button to pop-up, red button to step.

I'm sure there are more, and they're each typically one method in the controller...

If you get used to this, it's faster to navigate lists of smaller menus, for
example in the text editor, there are 3-5 item menus for edit, search, eval,
file, font, and finding "print-it" can either be pop-up-yellow-button,
navigate to umpteenth menu item, or pop-up-yellow-button, navigate to nth
sub-menu and mth menu item, or pop-up-yellow-button, step to 3rd small menu
(with menu border picks, red-dbl-click, or key-presses), pick  2nd of 3 items.

Comments?

stp

_ Stephen Travis Pope
_ Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology (CREATE)
_ Dept. of Music, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)
_ stp at create.ucsb.edu,  http://www.create.ucsb.edu/~stp/