Dave Arquati
I do sometimes wonder if some weird syndrome will be discovered to
explain away my unhealthy fascination with transport. I already have a

solution, though... try to turn it into a job!
Heh, good plan. I'm a journalist, so I have no such excuse...

Jonn

wrote in message
oups.com...
Dave Arquati

I do sometimes wonder if some weird syndrome
will be discovered to explain away my unhealthy
fascination with transport. I already have a solution,
though... try to turn it into a job!

Heh, good plan. I'm a journalist, so I have no such excuse...

Maybe you should become transport editor for BBC News... oh hang on, I don't
think they'd take anyone who knew anything about transport.

--
John Rowland - Spamtrapped
Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html
A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood.
That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line -
It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes

On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 01:58:37 +1030, (Aidan Stanger)
wrote:

Apart from when you're playing minefield, it doesn't usually lead to a
less efficient UI design either. Most Mac browsers give you a contextual
menu if you hold the mouse button down for half a second. I think the
alternative of control clicking only came about because someone noticed
the control key was hardly ever used...

Possibly. But on the Acorn Archimedes, which was a 3-button design
from the start, the usage was easy to teach and very consistent. From
left to right, the buttons were select, menu and adjust.

This would be what they always did - basically, left would select an
object (file, text, drawing, icon etc), the middle would give a
context menu (no top bar menus at all on the Arch - 100% context
menus) and the right would "adjust", e.g. multiple selections,
selecting an OK button or similar on a dialogue without closing it, or
any other similar action.

Rather than the idea of shift-clicking or holding down the button,
this always struck me as a very intelligent UI design - remember that
the Arch, being designed for schools, was intended to be easy to learn
- and that it was indeed.

Incidentally, many of its features made it to Windows, especially from
95 onwards - more drag-and-drop, the taskbar (RISC-OS pioneered the
idea of that with an icon bar, which didn't work in quite the same way
but was similar enough), context menus and such. (Some features
obviously came from the Mac as well!)

If you want 3 mouse buttons, all you have to do is get a three button
mouse. But unlike mice (where extra buttons are slightly useful) I find
trackpads are much more convenient with a single button.

I'm not a great fan of trackpads - like those supremely annoying
nipple joysticks they tend to wear the skin on the end of my finger
down. However, I'd agree to an extent about them working with a
single button OS - the best way to use them is IMO to turn on the "tap
to click" feature (not sure of the actual name for it), whereby you
release pressure and tap the pad again to select (or twice to double
click).

I do prefer my Microsoft wireless optical mouse, mind. They may not
always get it right with software, but despite the expense (40 quid)
the mouse is absolutely spot-on. Responsive, 2 buttons and a scroll
wheel/button, fits my hand perfectly and lasts about 3 months on a set
of AA batteries despite not having an off switch as such.

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
When replying please use neil at the above domain
'wensleydale' is a spam trap and is not read.

Neil Williams wrote to uk.transport.london on Fri, 28 Jan 2005:

I do prefer my Microsoft wireless optical mouse, mind. They may not
always get it right with software, but despite the expense (40 quid)
the mouse is absolutely spot-on. Responsive, 2 buttons and a scroll
wheel/button, fits my hand perfectly and lasts about 3 months on a set
of AA batteries despite not having an off switch as such.

I like mine, but use rechargeable batteries, and have to change them
nearly every other day! However, that's no great chore.....
--
"Mrs Redboots"
http://www.amsmyth.demon.co.uk/
Website updated 23 January 2005 with new photos

On Fri, 28 Jan 2005, Neil Williams wrote:

On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 01:58:37 +1030, (Aidan Stanger)
wrote:

Apart from when you're playing minefield, it doesn't usually lead to a
less efficient UI design either. Most Mac browsers give you a
contextual menu if you hold the mouse button down for half a second. I
think the alternative of control clicking only came about because
someone noticed the control key was hardly ever used...

Possibly. But on the Acorn Archimedes, which was a 3-button design from
the start, the usage was easy to teach and very consistent. From left
to right, the buttons were select, menu and adjust.

S - M - A: "Like the baby food", as one of my primary school teachers once
said!

This would be what they always did - basically, left would select an
object (file, text, drawing, icon etc), the middle would give a context
menu (no top bar menus at all on the Arch - 100% context menus) and the
right would "adjust", e.g. multiple selections, selecting an OK button
or similar on a dialogue without closing it, or any other similar
action.

Hmm. Select and menu were consistent, but adjust wasn't - it always did
somethink that wasn't selection or menu-opening, but what it did do was
completely context-dependent and random.

Incidentally, many of its features made it to Windows, especially from
95 onwards - more drag-and-drop, the taskbar (RISC-OS pioneered the idea
of that with an icon bar, which didn't work in quite the same way but
was similar enough), context menus and such. (Some features obviously
came from the Mac as well!)

Indeed - the Arc was way ahead of its time. I was particularly impressed
by the way saving files worked: you popped up a menu, went to the save
option, and up popped a submenu containing an icon representing the file;
you then simply dragged this to wherever you wanted to save it.
Incredibly elegant - it makes saving just another case of a normal file
move, unlike under every other OS, where saving (and opening) takes place
in a special dialogue box that's totally separate from normal
finder/explorer windows.

tom

--
File under 'directionless space novelty ultimately ruined by poor self-editing'

Tom Anderson writes:
Indeed - the Arc was way ahead of its time. I was particularly impressed
by the way saving files worked: you popped up a menu, went to the save
option, and up popped a submenu containing an icon representing the file;
you then simply dragged this to wherever you wanted to save it.
Incredibly elegant - it makes saving just another case of a normal file
move, unlike under every other OS, where saving (and opening) takes place
in a special dialogue box that's totally separate from normal
finder/explorer windows.

Mouse? Menu? Icon? Elegant? Gee, if I want to save the file to a
different place than where it came from, I just type the pathname after
the ":w" command.
--
Mark Brader "Never re-invent the wheel unnecessarily;
Toronto yours may have corners."
-- Henry Spencer

On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 11:28:38 +0000, Tom Anderson
wrote:

Hmm. Select and menu were consistent, but adjust wasn't - it always did
somethink that wasn't selection or menu-opening, but what it did do was
completely context-dependent and random.

Perhaps - but it was generally related to Select but slightly
different... anyway, the other two were consistent

Indeed - the Arc was way ahead of its time. I was particularly impressed
by the way saving files worked: you popped up a menu, went to the save
option, and up popped a submenu containing an icon representing the file;
you then simply dragged this to wherever you wanted to save it.
Incredibly elegant - it makes saving just another case of a normal file
move, unlike under every other OS, where saving (and opening) takes place
in a special dialogue box that's totally separate from normal
finder/explorer windows.

I both liked this and didn't like it, TBH. It was supremely logical -
as long as the app was coded properly, you could transfer between
applications using it, for example. The trouble with it was that
you'd have to find a Filer window to do the saving - though (again
unlike Windows) you could of course have the current window somewhere
other than on top!

In general, though, the UI struck me as something that people had
spent a lot of time designing, rather than Windows which strikes me as
something that's evolved over time, sometimes but not always for the
best.

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
When replying please use neil at the above domain
'wensleydale' is a spam trap and is not read.