Hi Richard,If you know of an application that is popular, runs on at least two platforms, and takes significant liberties with the native UI, I'd love to take a look at it.
At the moment I can only give you item 3. As soon as my HyperCard to Revolution conversion is completed (1 Jan 2003?), I can give you items 2 & 3. My application has a limited market (wineries); so it will never gain "popularity" awards...except perhaps within the industry. http://www.oenolog.com/
What I have done is to reduce a very complicated activity into a series of point and click actions that can be completed without typing on the keyboard. Looking at competitors' products, I don't think the functionality can be replicated in a standard menu-driven application without suffering significant setbacks in ease of learning, navigation, and use.
I'm not sure how this fits into your research, but I suggest you focus some time on the issue of pull down & select vs point & click. I watched a lot of non programmers design stacks in my days chairing the local HyperCard SIG, and I'd be willing to bet at least 8 out of 10 chose button-driven interfaces over menu-driven ones. I have archived somewhere several hundred stacks I downloaded from AOL for Jacque Gay, and I would be willing to wager that, of all stacks not created by Apple, at least 75% more contain Next/Previous buttons than contain Next/Previous menuItems. Most major apps now supplement pull-down menus with point-&-click palettes, and point-&-click is basic to web browsing.
The pull-down menu has been the mainstay of the GUI for over a quarter of a century. It's time for something better.
--
Rob Cozens
CCW, Serendipity Software Company
http://www.oenolog.com/who.htm
"And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three;
Who are a little wise, the best fooles bee."
from "The Triple Foole" by John Donne (1572-1631)
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