Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 12th Dec 2005 19:27 UTC
The Amiga. A platform with a history. Today, we are reviewing Amiga Forever, which was kindly provided by Cloanto, its manufacturer. The question I tried to answer during the usage of Amiga Forever was: does it have anything to offer to OS enthousiasts today? Of course Amiga Forever offers great functionality for Amiga fans, but what about the rest of us? Can Amiga Forever cater to more people than just Amiga fans?
Thread beginning with comment 71600
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:
2005-07-10
Sorry, but no one is getting it. It is WRONG to not have the menu visible at all times.
With your philosophy, context menus should also always be visible on the screen all the time, otherwise you'll have quite a lot of application features hidden from view. This is an application design problem, but one that inherently exists, because we have context menus.
Also what if a user encounters a Windows machine where the taskbar is automatically hidden?
The pragmatic reason of why it's done this way is to make more screen real estate. AmigaOS was originally designed to run on a TV set at a resolution of 640x200. Every pixel counts in that situation. Also again: Back then, we did not have Windows to tell everyone else how to do menus.
Granted, this isn't really true anymore, but it would be stupid to change this feature, just because everyone else does it.
You see, with all other OSes, you first LOOK at he menu and THEN you click to it directly over the menu
You are looking quite a lot at the aspect at something that needs to be learned once. Once you "get" it, it's no longer a problem.
Compare this with MacOSX: Would a complete beginner know how to activate Exposé? No, because it's hidden. But he'll learn how to do this and he'll overcome.
MacOSX also has a bajillion hidden features and shortcuts that take a long time to find out and learn. Many more than AmigaOS.
-- you know where to click immediately.
The location of the menu in AmigaOS doesn't move. It's always situated in the top left of the screen.