Scrollbar morphems?

Jecel Mattos de Assumpcao Jr. jecel at lsi.usp.br
Wed Sep 6 17:32:49 UTC 1995


Do this:

  - go to the object you want to scroll
  - choose "Move to Own Window" in the blue menu
  - resize the new window so some background can be seen and go there
  - choose "radar view" from the yellow menu
  - resize the window to show just the amount you wanted
  - scroll

What could be easier? :-) Ok... so it looks strange...

Also, if you resize a text editor ( try an evaluator, for example )
you get tiny scrollbars, right? So the code must be already there -
just browse until you find it.

As for me: DON'T SCROLL ME IN!

I like to think, as Mr. Spock would say: "There are always alternatives."

I found dragging with the hand tool in Macpaint pretty nifty and even
intuitive. And how about a look at PARC's "perspective wall" on page
281 of the February 1991 Byte to get the imagination going?

My favorite idea is to use lenses, so that the whole object is
visible somewhere in the virtual screen. I really hate hidden
stuff ( don't even get me started on CUT/COPY/PASTE :-)

Xerox is working on lenses too. In fact, they are patenting them -
the meanies! I can't say that I blame them after what happened with
Apple, but I don't like the idea of having to do things differently
just to avoid paying royalties rather than because they are a better
alternative :-(

See http://www.parc.xerox.com/PARC/istl/gir/mli.html for more details.

While I am in the mood - I have two objections about the accept/cancel
buttons. I found them very pretty, in fact, but they would cause
problems for people who are color blind - this is something that
should be considered if it is intended to be used by a large audience.

The other problem is that after you edited a method and before you
accepted it ( or canceled ) the on screen image is inconsistent with
what the object is really like. An alternative that I had considered
was that the system would give you a clone of the method source that
you could edit at your leisure. To update the original method, you
would drag-and-drop the text on the slot. The problem with this is
that it is much less convenient and also very dangerous - you might
drop the text on the wrong method by mistake!

That is all, for now.
-- Jecel



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