Mmm...pie menus

Everyone seems to be talking about pie menus today. Mozillazine has a nice big post about it. Even Slashdot has an article about it, so now it's time for Blogzilla to jump on the pie menu bandwagon.

I installed pie menus from mozdev and after using it for the morning, I'd have to say that it's something I can really get used to.

What are pie menus? Well, they're a replacement to the regular pop-up context menus that everyone is familiar with. (for a nice explanatory graphic, see this link: TestPieMenu

Instead of right-clicking on a window and being given a list of all available options, after installing pie-menus when you right-click you see a circle listing the main options available.

Moving the mouse in one of the four directions available changes the pie-menu to display the sub-menus available for that option.

It seems like a really nice way to organize the menus in a logical manner without overloading the user with too many options at one.

On the other hand, I can see how it might be more difficult to find the option that you are looking for since it buries options under hierarchies that are not visible until you select them.

Anyhow, judge for yourself. At the very least it's something worth checking out.

ps. One annoying issue I just noticed as I was putting this article together is that if you right click on a link, there is no copy option!

» posted by jeffp on August 23, 2002 at 10:58 AM

Comments

You can always use the CTRL key to suppress the pie menu and access the popup one.

# posted by Javaboy

This technology appears to be patented by Alias|Wavefront. :-(

A reader of my site pointed this out here: http://jim.roepcke.com/5531

# posted by Jim Roepcke

You can always change the pie menu to pop up on middle button click via the Preferences. Also as Javaboy pointed out the CTRL key suppresses the pie menu.

# posted by Roger

I love the pie menus but I wish they were text by default or option (I know text appears after a while). Currently I have to first decode the tiny icons, then try to remember the directions.

# posted by Daz

Ah, hacked piemenu.js to always show text labels now so that s good.

# posted by Daz

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