Re: Bugs & Probs with the panel.

[Michael Hudson <mwh21 cam ac uk>]

On Thu, 28 May 1998, Nate Riffe wrote:
> anyway, the "more..." does solve the problems of having a long menu, but i
> don't like this solution.  i think scrolling is more intuitive, not to
> mention consistent.  also, though splitting works for long menus, will it
> work for _really_ long menus, say a font menu like Caolan's but with more
> fonts?  i've seen some in netscape that go on to create a menu four or
> five levels deep.  also, here at depaul u., the lab computers run win95
> and have a "courseware" item on the start menu that has >100 entries,
> mostly submenus.  the courseware menu takes up the whole damn screen by
> itself and the submenus (when opened) make it worse.  the secondary
> problem with menu-splitting is that there's debris all over the screen. 
> scrolling solves the original problem and does not leave debris.  the
> secondary problem with scolling menus though, is that there is necessarily
> an order imposed on the menu items, such as alphabetical or chronological
> (i.e. recent documents) order.  finding a menu item on an unordered
> scrolling menu is counterproductive.  i don't know how one might go about
> solving that problem, but in general i would rather scroll.
> 
> -nate

I think if you have more than ~10 items, you shouldn't be using a menu.
What to use instead is no always obvious, but a combo box or scrolling
list (like the text tool in the gimp) is, IMHO, a better path to tread.

Michael Hudson
Jesus College
Cambridge
mwh21@cam.ac.uk