At 2:10 PM -0800 12/30/99, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
<snip>
> > I still would like to know what, if any, messaging is provided for
>> while a stack menu is displayed in MetaCard. I can track the mouse
>> position, for instance. But when you disrecommend a script-based
>> workaround for this "problem", are the quotes to indicate it's not a
>> problem for you? If so, it won't be a problem for me, either. I'll
>> just tell my company that MetaCard is unfortunately unsatisfactory
>> for our purposes, and we'll just have to continue to use Awfulware!
>
>But is really a problem for *your users*? As I said before, of the
>thousands of other people using MetaCard and MetaCard applications,
>none have reported it as a problem. Possibly you're the only one that
>noticed it?
Well, it's going to be a problem for my users simply because of what
I am attempting to provide, which is fairly precise evaluation as to
whether the user has selected a particular menu item. If I intend to
respond to the user's mistakes, I don't want those "mistakes" to
include something that would have worked correctly under the actual
application they're being trained on, but that becomes an error only
because I don't or can't author the emulated interface accurately. I
could certainly decide on a bare-bones implementation which has no
rollover effects, provides some sort of generic menuing that doesn't
particularly resemble the target application, and so on. Fortunately,
I have so much optimism regarding MetaCard (having actually purchased
it, woohoo! ;-) that I totally reject the typifying of my message as
either harping or raising a stink. If I gave that impression, I
really do apologize! I am having too much fun to be harping!!!
Actually, I'm so close to accomplishing what I want that it's
probably the tantalizing nearness of the goal that makes me sound
more frustrated than I am. Right now I know I could quite
successfully use a really simple combination of focusIn and focusOut
handlers in the card script of the menu panel stack, along with a
simple flag to ignore the first click that opens the menu. It seems I
could handle everything simply and cleanly this way if I could now
just get the menu to go away by any scripting message at all, like
sending escapeKey or something.
I understand that the menu behavior should be automatic. On the other
hand, wouldn't it be useful to be able to script a robot user? So if
you wanted to show a process of selecting a menu item you could use a
stack menu panel scripted to operate on autopilot, as it were. Like I
said, I have no problem determining that the user has clicked on the
menu heading button while the menu is down. If I could just send an
escapeKey message to the menu somehow when that happened, that's all
I'd need. That's why I was wondering what messages (besides
focusIn/Out and some mouseLoc stuff) are sent, and more especially,
to whom.
> > Basically, the most desirable situation from my point of view would
>> be that MetaCard would allow the handling of mouseUp and mouseDown
>> messages to the menu heading button *somehow* while the stack menu is
>> deployed.
>
>The problem here is that menu behavior is automatic. So even if you
>got the messages, you wouldn't be able to do anything about it. The
>only way to allow fixing it via scripts would be to require that
>people use the "pulldown" command to open a menu and then add a
>"closemenu" command that would have to be called to close the menu
>after a selection had been made (or if they didn't). Pretty ugly.
<more snipping to be replaced by hundreds of my apologies for sounding grumpy>
>Look and feel standard deviations *are* bugs, though of course they're
>class 4s (1 is crash, 2 is data loss, 3 is significant impairment of
>functionality. The priority for fixes is also a function of how
>common the problem is and whether or not there is a workaround). But
>regardless of whether you think it's a bug report or a feature
>request, you're better off just sending it in to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>As long as you've taken the time to make sure that it's not already
>implemented, the more information we have about the problems you face,
>the better MetaCard will be at solving them.
> Regards,
> Scott
If I can do something like send an escapeKey to make a menu go away,
I don't even think there's anything to report, especially since I'm
quite aware of how much non-standardness there is in interface
features.
Regards,
David
--
David Cramer, Process Innovation Evangelist 87-1313 Border Street
PBSC Computer Training Centres (an IBM company) Winnipeg MB R3H 0X4
Corporate Office Research & Development Canada
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