popup - pulldown command

[Wouter]

Jan Schenkel janschenkel at yahoo.com
Mon Jun 28 02:53:19 EDT 2004


> Hi Wouter,
>
> In what sense can it not replace the looks?
> --
> on mouseDown
>   popup btn "Foobar" at the bottomLeft of me
> end mouseDown
> --
> Admittedly I use Windows, but I don't think there's
> much difference on other platforms.
>
> Jan Schenkel.

Hi Jan,

The behavior is ok.
But on Mac OS X  it seems to use system popup windows.
Whereas the pulldown seems to use an internal routine for the pulldown 
window.
So the popup has the looks of the Mac OS popup windows while the 
pulldown has a Windows-like look.
But apart from that, under some conditions the pulldown seems snappier 
than the popup.
Also (on Mac OS X) there seems to be a limit of lines in the popup but 
not in the pulldown (didn't test its limits yet).
This limit of lines in the popup should never be reached (bad ui) but 
it is there.
And once this limit has been trespassed all popups stop working.
This has been mentioned by Frank Leahy on a OL thread following the 
"iGame3D status 062204" thread.
And because I liked his answer and it didn't get posted on the list I 
include it here.


>   frank at backtalk.com
>   Thu 24 Jun 2004 15:32:21 CEST

> I can't believe I just spent 20 minutes on this...
>
> Here's what I found:
>
> 1) There are 1451 lines in the text of your menu.
>
> 2) I removed big blocks of lines, one block at a time, and found that 
> when there are 873 lines it still works, and when it's at 1000 lines 
> the popup menu no longer works.
>
> 3) When the error occurs, it affects all pop up menus in RunRev, e.g. 
> the popups in the RunRev IDE no longer work either.
>
> 4) This suggests there's either an OS limitation, or RunRev is calling 
> a common routine which has an internal data structure that becomes 
> corrupted.  It's probably worth reporting this in Bugzilla.
>
>
> But let's step back a minute and ask whether there was any reason that 
> I had to spend 20 minutes on this at all:
>
> A) What I did is Debugging 101.  If you'd done it yourself this email 
> thread never would have happened.
>
> B) If it hurts when you bang your head against the wall, stop banging 
> your head against the wall.  If the menu blows up when you change it 
> to a popup, then don't change it to a popup.
>
> C) Don't stop developing because you've reached some boundary 
> condition that causes a crash.  Document the problem in Bugzilla and 
> keep going by working around it.  That's Development 101.
>
> D) I rewrote the Menu Manager for the Mac II in 1986, and I designed 
> and implemented the first hierarchical menus.  We had long discussions 
> with the Human Interface Group about how many levels to support (we 
> settled on 5), and how many menu items to allow (we settled on 
> providing scrolling arrows).  What you're doing with hierarchical 
> menus is what we hoped no one would ever attempt.  Just because you 
> can do something doesn't mean you should.  I suggest you come up with 
> a different UI for your problem.
>
> Good luck,
> -- Frank
>


Greetings,
Wouter