OSNews

@ Don Cox

"However, on the Mac, this can be confusing because the menus keep changing depending on which program window (or the backdrop) is active. On the Amiga, each program has its own screen with its own menu bar, so the user is not confused. You can see from the look of the screen which program is running, and you expect to see that program's menus."

As I am sure you will know, Don, not all Amiga programs open up their own screen. Internet browsers usually run in a window on Workbench. When running these sort of programs, things can get even more confusing than what you just described with regards to MacOS.

In MacOS, people can actually *see* that the menu bar changes as soon as they switch to another application. When switching between Amiga programs running on Workbench, they cannot see the change until they click their right mouse button and activate the otherwise _hidden_ menu bar options.

It can happen that someone tries to get to the command line prompt (Workbench menu) although the Voyager (browser) window is currently active. This then ends up with him moving his mouse to the upper left corner of the screen and wondering why there is no option "Type in command..."


"The next question is which is better, menus that stay open after you click them, or menus that close as soon as you release the mouse button. IMO the latter are faster and more efficient in use, but a bit harder to learn for beginners. However, one is not a beginner for more
than a day or two."

Heh You should really go and take a beginner's course for computer illiterates. You would be surprised to see how seemingly 'stupid' (no offence!) some people can be. Not everyone is able to grasp the concepts of modern graphical user interfaces within a few days, not even weeks sometimes. And some of these people are actually highly educated in normal life...

In any case, menus that stay open, are proved to be easier to use for Joe User. However, this sort of thing should be configurable anyway...