menu flap (was Re: Preliminary release of Squeak3.0 available fortest)

Scott Wallace Scott.Wallace at disney.com
Mon Feb 5 20:56:34 UTC 2001


The menu flap was, from the beginning, only a trial balloon, which 
immediately exhibited some annoying properties.  Many of us very 
quickly reconfigured ours so that it wouldn't pop out on mouse-over, 
or else simply removed it from our flap setup altogether.

Also, as time went on and the system menus kept growing, it got more 
and more awkward to jigsaw-puzzle them together in an ingratiating 
fashion into the rectangular tableau of the flap menu, and no one has 
given that any attention for quite a while.

I feel that the consensus is that it is better, on balance, not to 
have a menu flap present at all in the out-of-box experience of 3.0. 
Are there disagreements?

Since there may be a few residual menu-flap aficionados, I would 
intend to make it possible for the user to add a menu flap via an 
explicit request, as is the case with the Stack Tools flap.  And to 
make its default behavior be only to pop out when the tab is 
explicitly clicked.

Regarding the other out-of-box flaps, any feedback on things that 
should be there but are not, and things that are there but should not 
be, would be valuable.  We can always change flap contents on the fly 
via updates but we are reluctant to do so because we don't want to 
clobber peoples' existing flaps.  So 3.0 gives us a rare opportunity 
to get a clean start on these.  So please send me your comments, 
either emailing me privately or posting them to the list.

  -- Scott

At 3:23 PM -0500 2/5/01, Doug Way wrote:

>- The Menu flap opens on mouse-over, not mouse-click.  This is 
>inconsistent with the other flaps, and it seems like it's too easy 
>to accidentally invoke it.  (Especially given that the menu flap is 
>of borderline usefulness, IMHO...)





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