Re: [iPAQ] UWM -- the unnamed window manager

On Fri, Jan 04, 2002 at 09:02:19PM +1100, Julius P. Malkiewicz wrote:
> Speaking of older stuff ... any thoughts on the applicabilty of pie
> menes? see Don Hopkins page at
> <http://art.net/~hopkins/Don/piemenus/index.html>
> I'd think it may be useful for pointer-only interfaces ...

as I said earlier - I see a problem with screen space here. the ipaq is
only 240 pixels across. you need maybe 100 pixels min for an acceptable
pie menu, which means that you have an area of 140x220 pixels in the
centre of the screen where the pie menu does, in fact, center on the
cursor without parts of it being off-screen. and that's an optimistic
size guess, the mock-ups and screenshots of real pie menus I've seen
are considerably larger.

personally, I tend to think that menus per se, no matter what the form,
should be avoided if at all possible on a PDA device. that is because
every menu is a multiple-step interface, where no real action takes
place until all steps are completed. single-step interfaces work much
better on a PDA device.

example: a "new" button works much better than a "file->new" menu. for
a mouse user, it's not much of a difference. for a touchscreen-user, it
is. just try it.

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