“The new ‘radial’ menus follow on from an earlier patent exploring the use of ‘spiraling’ menus to expand options or level of detail,” MacNN reports. “The use of a circular motion is ideal for touchscreen devices and allows ‘contextual menus’ to offer more choices without using any additional screen real estate.”
MacNN reports, “The application, simply entitled ‘Radial Menus,’ also describes how radial menus can be more efficiently selected with a pointing device like a mouse over the current “move to menubar to select standard features” model found in all three major operating systems today.”
More, including patent app illustrations, in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Arline M.” for the heads up.]
Anyone know how to get rid of those little advert bubbles that pop up when you mouse over them? (i.e. mouse over the word ‘touchscreen’ in the article) They drive me bonkers and I can’t find how to turn it off….
Yes. But if I told you, MDN would have to kill me.
Just MDN trying to make few bucks. 🙁
If you click on the “?” at the top right of the ad, then click “Disable” on the page that comes up, the ads are supposed to be disabled, but they still show up for me (Safari 5.0.3 in OSX 10.6.5).
It sucks-can’t do anything without being bombarded by advertising.
@popups:
Nevermind-they’re disabled for me now…
JS blacklist is a Safari extension that blocks the inline ads:
http://homepage.mac.com/drewthaler/jsblacklist/
Lion.
May the technology gods prevent Apple from adding cheesy eye-candy to the OS X interface. No thanks!
LIke it says, this particular idea is more applicable to a touch-based interface.
However, I DO think the major Mac OS release AFTER Lion will use some new concept to replace the current functions of the Menu Bar and Dock. With screens getting larger, wider, and/or very high resolution, it no longer makes sense to put such functions at the very top and bottom of the screen, taking up permanent vertical space (Yes, I know you can put the Dock on the side of the screen and make it hide). In many current applications, most of the common functions are part of the window, so the Menu Bar is not used as much. Whatever replaces the Menu Bar and Dock should appear when needed, then disappear, and it should appear close to the current pointer location, not at the extreme top and bottom of the screen. It should work somewhat like a Contextual Menu, but with greatly enhanced functionality.
‘Anyone know how to get rid of those little advert bubbles that pop up when you mouse over them? (i.e. mouse over the word ‘touchscreen’ in the article) They drive me bonkers and I can’t find how to turn it off….’
Try PithHelmet.
Radial menus are already available from the right click in CAD software like Solid Edge ST3.
Apple = fail
c’mon Apple radial menus have been in 3d apps like Modo and Maya since forever. Maybe they’ll be lucky because it’s not officially patented, but I doubt it.
What bubbles??
I, for one, welcome our new radial overlords!
The game Neverwinter Nights uses radial menus, and once you have practiced with them, they are very fast and intuitive for actions you do all the time.
Pogoplank
@ rsbell
thanks for the tips on disabling those DAMN popup adds!!!!!!
Anyone tried Adblock from safari extensions gallery?
Popup ads?
Real simple, don’t scroll over them.
Try ghostery. Blocks web bugs including the pop ups.
@Rob
Awesome! Took me less than 30 seconds to install that extension and enjoy no more inline ad popup/rollovers.
If you combine with this slightly earlier patent (http://www.t3.com/news/apple-patent-glasses-free-3d-display-technologies?=51441) then it only makes sense to rethink your OS functionality. Apple is full steam ahead with outlandishly cool tech. Can’t wait to see the gen3-4 iPads. With glasses free 3d and radial menus I cant see MS or Google keeping up with anything Apple is doing right now
Running ClickToFlash will block most of the CPU intensive ads.
I’m glad Apple is trying to copyright this – remember the radial wait indicator. I first saw this in Mac OS X 10.0 I think. Everyone is using it now.
@budinski
Microsoft never keeps up with what Apple does now. Thats why they copy so they can do what apple does now.. in 2 years
to all you Who think the mac MacOS realise after lion will have a radically different GUI:
MacOS X removed the inner workings of MacOS and replaced them with unix, leaving the os a “‘shell’ of it’s former self” (no pun intended) but it was still running on an apple hardware architecture.
Intel macs are essentially slightly modified I.B.M. P.C.s ( oh sure they have nvram and firmware, firmware that’s compatible with pc “bios”)
So all that makes a mac a mac, is the gui. Remove that and it’s no longer a mac.
So you think apples going to kill the mac in 2 years?