[self-interest] Re: nice job!

Randy Smith Randall.Smith at Eng.Sun.COM
Fri Mar 17 16:44:42 UTC 2000


 
> 
> David Ungar wrote:
> > Since you asked, it was Randy Smith who conceived of and put together 
> > this tutorial.
> 
> I thought so. Congratulations (5 years too late :-) Randy!
> 

Thanks to you both.  In keeping with the Kansas/Oz metaphor,
I was calling this the "Yellow Brick Road" tutorial.  This
particular path to enlightenment would undoubtedly feature
several visits to the Emerald Debugger.


> On a related topic, where did the famous "3D buttons" now universally used in
> GUIs come from? I have never seen it in anything older than ARK, so I have
> always assumed that Randy invented it and everyone copied from him (though
> NeXTStep, most likely). The "embossed text" thing was neat too.
> 

Thanks again.  I'm sure the idea was pretty inevitable, but
as far as I know, ARK was the first place 3D buttons
appeared.  You have to remember in those days just using a
mouse was a weird idea.  In user studies we often had to
expect a 15 - 30 minute lead time before subjects would get
comfortable with the "little box on the table moves the
arrow on the screen" concept!





More information about the Self-interest mailing list