Menus
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When Steve Jobs and his NeXT team set out to create the NEXTSTEP Operating System they wanted to use many of the ground breaking ideas they had helped create at Apple for use in the Mac OS. However, NeXT was prevented from doing so by Apple management. Apple threatened to take legal action if NeXT infringed upon their patents. This is ironic considering much of the NeXT team was responsible for those patented designs. Since the team couldn't use the designs from the Mac OS they came up with some new ones.
One of the first things you'll probably notice when looking at a NeXT OS or a Mac OS is that they both use unique menu systems when compared to other operating systems. I like to call these two OS' application centric due to the fact you have a single, dynamic menu used system wide. Operating Systems like Windows, Be OS and just about every *nix window manager I've seen I call window centric because every window has it's own set of menus. The debate over which method is better will be forever fought by OS zealots and so called "interface experts" but I happen to prefer the application centric approach.
The fact that both are application centric is about all the Mac OS and NEXTSTEP menus have in common. The Mac OS uses a single menu bar fixed to the top of the screen. The menu bar has a clock and an application switcher which doubles as an indicator as to what app is accepting keystrokes or is "forward". In the picture above the application "SimpleText" is forward and accepting keystrokes.
NeXT came up with a different approach while keeping the concept similar. NEXTSTEP uses a single, floating, vertical menu. The menu has a titlebar which indicates which application you're working with. Like the Mac OS menu bar, the NeXT menu is dynamic and changes depending on what application is forward. In the picture above the application "Edit" is forward. The NeXT menu defaults to the top left hand corner of the screen. It can be moved anywhere on screen by dragging it's titlebar and it's default position can be adjusted via preferences. Why would you need the default changed after you've moved it? More on that soon.
The two OS' menus differ not only in appearance but function as well. Mac OS menus are "intelligent" that is, they are aware of the cursor's position. In Mac OS, if you click on a menu it's contents will display and highlight as you point with the mouse. If you need to access a different menu merely point to it and it's contents will display allowing you to eventually select anything you want with only two clicks, one to access the menus and one to make a selection. Alternately, you can do it all with a single click if you hold the mouse button down as you navigate, releasing the button over a menu item will result in it being selected.
NEXTSTEP menus took some getting used too as they are unintelligent. They require you click each selection you wish to access. For instance, if you wanted to access three levels deep and make a selection you'd have to click the mouse four times. Once to open level 1, once to open level 2, again to open level 3 and then once more to make your selection within the level 3 menu. The system requires many more clicks in general use. It's not all bad, however, as they added a unique feature. In NEXTSTEP, sub-menus can be torn off into their own independent menus for easy access. If, for instance, you constantly accessed the services menu it could be torn off into a separate floating menu and placed in a convenient location. You can tear off as many menus as you wish and place them wherever you like. They get their own titlebars and close boxes.
I mentioned that default positions could be set. Well, the reason for this is that NEXTSTEP remembers your custom menu settings for each application. If I had moved application Edit's menu to the bottom left of the screen and tore off two sub-menus the menu locations and settings would be remembered next time I launched Edit.app. If you prefer your menu at the the bottom left, the top right or anywhere else just set that location as the system default. It's position can be overridden by your custom settings on a per app basis.
The NeXT menu system does have a flaw, they don't clean up after themselves. For example, if I went two menus deep to make a selection, those two menus will remain expanded until I click the main level menu. This ends up wasting a lot of screen space unless I tidy up. Fortunately, NeXT put in another option to make up for that. The option is called mouse menu. A mouse menu maps a pop-up menu to a mouse button of the users choice, assuming the user has a multi-button mouse. When you click the button a menu pops up at that location. The menu works like classic Mac OS, where you must hold the button down as you navigate and then release to make a selection. The menu disappears when the button is released. Should you click too close to the bottom or side of a screen the menu automatically scrolls so you can make any selection. You can even use mouse menu to save screen space by setting the default menu position to off the screen. This allows you to rely exclusively on mouse menu for all of your work.
Overall, I happen to prefer the Mac OS menu system. The menu bar takes up very little space and their pointer tracking ability makes it much easier to find what I want and select it. NeXT mouse menus help but there's just something about them I don't like that I can't put my finger on. Both systems will get the job done.
