On Friday 24 December 2004 11:52 am, Michael Latta wrote:
> I have noticed a general UI styles in Squeak that I question.
>
> 1) The menu items in the system do not enable/disable based on context.
>   For example you can set a gradient fill on a morph that does not
> support gradient fills.  You can select "remove method" from a method
> list with no selection.

We don't have disabled menu items. However, there's many cases where a menu 
item will be visible or not depending on context. Those cases where menu 
items appear but don't do anything are bugs.

Whether inactive or unavailable menu items should be visible but distinguished 
as unavailable vs. being invisible is another question.

> 2) The menus are too tightly spaced, and in too small a font.  This can
> make selecting the proper choice much more difficult.  The Yes/No
> promps in particular create very small targets.  This may have been
> done to allow menus on very small screens, but should be adjusted on
> regular displays.  A padding between menu items would help a great deal
> in both usability and readability.

Why not just change the menu font? You can do that if you want. If you look at 
the 3.9alpha default look (from Diego Gomez Deck), you'll see that there is a 
larger default menu font. See the attached image.

> 3) There are very long menus that require selecting "more..." to get
> the remaining selections.  Has anyone thought about hierarchical menus
> that would bring more choices closer to the mouse point and be easier
> to both use and habituate on?  In particular the use of circular menus
> would be more usable.

A massive re-organization of the menus would be the first order of business 
here.

However, I don't find that hierarchical menus work particularly well beyond 
two levels (one level of submenu).

Circular menus are easier from a mouse point of view but often seem to take up 
more screen real estate for the same number of items.

-- 
Ned Konz
http://bike-nomad.com/squeak/
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