Isn't this why God created pop-up menus (those that pop-up right UNDER 
the cursor)?  Why not pop-up scrollbars?  Right UNDER the 
cursor...wherever the cursor happens to be.  Of course this requires an 
extra button mouse or key combination which brings up other 
problems...unless the popup menu leads to a scrollbar or has one embedded 
within it ;-)  Instead of a flop-out menu, why not a popup menu with a 
scrollbar attached to its' bottom or left (or right or top)?  It seems 
the paradigm of Smalltalk should be reversed...

We mouse over to the an area and pop up (Smalltak = flopout) a menubar; 
we then click on a section of it to popup a menu.   Instead don't mouse 
anywhere.  Click and you popup/flopout a menu wherever the mouse happens 
to be.  The menu has a thumbnail of the entire screen.  Clicking on the 
thumbnail brings up the menubars/scrollbars for the section of the 
thumbnail you clicked on (allowing you to get around the fact that the 
mouse may not be over the area you want to deal with).

S

----- David Cramer said:

>Hmmm...a topic that might degenerate, eh, Craig? Well, being a bit of a
>degenerate myself, here goes.
>
>I have always been fascinated by all sorts of interface and design
>arguments, but lately I have had the opportunity/challenge to really nail
>down some of the fundamental issues for my own design efforts. Without
>going into detail, let's just say that my job, and perhaps even my
>company's existence, could depend on the wisdom of my recent and upcoming
>design decisions!
>
>As to Squeak, I have been investigating Smalltalk kinda like the way
>suburbanites who never cook anything more complicated than microwaved
>Chimichangas subscribe to Gourmet magazine. So I haven't done anything more
>than run the basic Squeak app on my Macintosh and read this mailing list.
>Sigh...
>
>With that extensive background, I am obviously a boobie...er newbie, but I
>gotta admit I just can't make some aspects of the Squeak interface "work"
>for me.
>
>Scrollbars (NO, NOT SCROLLBARS! AAAAAGHHHH!)
>
>OK, scrollbars are clearly problematic. I admit that the right side of a
>window is not *necessarily* the best place for a window control, since the
>right side is just about guaranteed to *not* be located predictably
>relative to anything, as variously sized and shaped windows can be open
>anywhere on a screen.
>
>And lately, like I said, I've been trying to work out an organizing
>principle for interface and layout design, which I'm calling A Sense of
>Place, and which basically boils down to location predictability.
>
>     Bad example: the worst interface design decision in all of MIcrosoft
>     Windows' GUI, the recent migration of window closing controls to the top
>     right corner of windows.
>
>     Good example: any window closing control in the top left corner of a
>     window in any GUI to the right of Asia.
>
>And what's so hot about a window's upper left corner? Well, Dan, I think
>that your point about the location of text when working with short lines
>could be taken even farther. As far as I can tell, adding the basic
>top->bottom and left->right reading pattern of most Western languages to
>the fact that titles and headings are short pretty well guarantees that the
>most significant (therfore predictable) area of the majority of windows
>containing text will be the upper left. Since windows containing text have
>to be a big percentage of all windows, that argues that the upper left
>corner of all windows should be a standard location for main controls,
>particularly the window close control.
>
>And by extension of those same basic ideas, the left side of the window is
>almost as predictable as the top left corner.
>
>But does that prove to me that window controls like scrollbars should be on
>the left? Maybe.
>
>I see two problems with the general usability of southpaw scrollbars:
>
>    1) If we're talking text windows, the mouse pointer crossing the text
>you're
>       reading is a troublesome visual irritant, both while it's crossing 
>just
>       because it gets in the way, and after it has crossed because it drifts
>       around over there on top of the first few characters of lines of text
>       you might be trying to read and interferes with their readability,
>       especially if you try to adjust the scrollbar at the same time.
>(Remember
>       this little detail when we get to problem #2.)
>       So regardless of the argument already established that "left side
>       good" (predictability), visual irritation now has to be factored in
>as a
>       counter-argument.
>    2) Not all windows are text windows. Now we just claimed that the high
>       percentage of text windows argued that all windows should have main
>       controls in the top left corner.
>
>          Q: So why wouldn't this claim support scrollbars on the left?
>
>          A: Because you don't need to close windows while you're reading
>them,
>             but you frequently operate scrollbars then.
>
>       Form follows function. But functions are dynamic, not static. So if
>form
>       follows function, it has to look at the dynamic aspects of the 
>function
>       in question as well as the static ones. In regard to the functioning
>of a
>       scrollbar, the fact is that use of this control--if it's on the
>left--is
>       *guaranteed* to conflict with simultaneous actions taking place in
>close
>       proximity to the control.
>       In any case, since all windows are not text windows, we're now
>obliged to
>       factor in the differing requirements of windows where the lower right
>       corner may be more significant, or the middle, or the top right, 
>and so
>       on. As far as these windows are concerned, by the argument of 
>proximity
>       to the significant area of the window, window controls should be on 
>the
>       lower right, or the middle, or the top right. And we still have to 
>bear
>       in mind that controls which are in the best place from a static
>point of
>       view may be in the worst place from a dynamic one.
>
>In adding up all of the arguments presented so far, I think the placing of
>scrollbars on the left is far from a fargone conclusion, even though
>convention has kept it there. Convention, as they say, don't cut no ice
>with me. Besides that, I've left out another essential ingredient of the
>design process, the counteracting of the undesirable features of an
>alternative solution. Lifting up the argument that short lines of text make
>the left side good for scrollbars and looking underneath it, what makes the
>right side bad? Isn't there really only one answer? Isn't it just because
>it might not be as easy to hit that distant right scrollbar with the mouse,
>off in the boonies, as it were, while you're concentrating on all those
>short lines on the left? Fortunately, there is a fiendishly clever solution
>to this evil. If you ensure that the scrollbar, and its various parts, are
>all relatively prominent visually, then even when you're totally mesmerized
>by some really cute short line of text on the left, you'll have no problem
>with picking out and using a righthand scrollbar.
>
>Gee, I haven't even gotten around to my problems with flop-out scrollbars.
>(When I was little I had a bad experience with a flop-out scrollbar, but
>then I learned how to do up my zipper! :-)))) And what's wrong with menus
>on every bloody window on the screen. And...
>
>Well, thanks for listening. I shut up now, go bed. (So maybe I should write
>a book?)
>
>David
>
>>stp at limbo.create.ucsb.edu (Stephen Travis Pope) wrote...
>>>> ...[I put] the scroll bar on the left (where it belongs, at least
>>>> in Smalltalk).
>>
>>Craig Latta <latta at interval.com> responded...
>>>	Ooh, couldn't let that one pass... :)  (Normally I would, having
>>>witnessed numerous discussions on the topic degenerate.)  Why exactly do
>>>scrollbars belong on the left? Because a left-hander put them there in
>>>the seventies? Because readers of English scan from the left? And what
>>>forces the issue in Smalltalk as opposed to other systems?
>>
>>It was not a left-hander that put them there, nor that kep them there.
>>Scroll bars started on the left in a number of systems at Xerox PARC for a
>>very good reason -- namely it is where most of the text is when you work
>>with short lines.  It's the same kind of reason as why Smalltalk does not
>>put menus at the top of the screen (it's far away).  From the earliest
>>days, Smalltalk used flop-out scroll-bars to economize on screen real
>>estate.  Flop-out scroll bars do not work on the right because they
>>obscure the left side of the next pane over, where you do all your quick
>>recognition.
>>
>>I'm not stuck on left-side scrolling -- I just want you to know the real
>>history and the reasons it has persisted.  As the PlayWithMe1 window in
>>Squeak demonstrates, scrolling panes in morphic are easily configurable
>>left/right and inboard/outboard (they can be changed in place using the
>>last two items in the option menu).
>>
>>Ciao
>>	- Dan
>
>
>
>


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