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From: dorner@pequod.cso.uiuc.edu (Steve Dorner)
Subject: Re: removing balloon help....
Message-ID: <1991Jun14.142433.23341@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Sender: usenet@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (News)
Organization: University of Illinois at U-C
References: <1CE00001.h1mowr@avalon.caladan.wa.com> <NEERI.91Jun14134647@iis.ethz.ch>
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1991 14:24:33 GMT
Lines: 37

In article <NEERI.91Jun14134647@iis.ethz.ch> neeri@iis.ethz.ch (Matthias Ulrich Neeracher) writes:
>I disagree. Some options are put on the menubar SO THEY ARE FOUND EASILY WHEN
>THEY ARE EVER NEEDED. Or do you seriously believe that "About ...", which is
>the most prominent option in a menubar, is used the most often ?

"About..." is primarily a marketing tool; this is who I am, this is
who wrote me, this is who you should send more cash to.  Hence its
prominence; greed beats out function any old time.  The Finder is one
of the very few apps I can think of that puts anything remotely useful
in the "About..." box; most apps (my own included) don't put anything
there I'd ever need.

>[Witty comment about Balloon Help deleted.]
>    So, if you want to know how to type a non-breaking hyphen in <Insert your
>favorite Word processor>, you fire up your interactive Computer Based Training
>aid ?

Explain to me how balloon help will tell me how to type a non-breaking hyphen.
To what shall I point?


As a developer, I'm really pleased with Balloon Help, because it's going to
give me a way to communicate with *novice* users of my program.

As a sophisticated user with a fairly static set of applications that I
know well, Balloon Help is useless clutter in my menu bar.  I do want to
get rid of it on my mac, which I certainly don't want ANYONE else messing
with anyway.

I disagree with "It's stupid for Apple not to make the Help menu
optional" AND with "It's stupid to want to get rid of the Help
menu." I think both sides in this argument have perfectly reasonable
positions; There are perfectly good reasons to make the Help menu
optional, but Apple can't make *everything* (easily) customizable.
--
Steve Dorner, U of Illinois Computing Services Office
Internet: s-dorner@uiuc.edu  UUCP: uunet!uiucuxc!uiuc.edu!s-dorner
