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FTA: Another widespread source of influence was IBM Common User Access from 1987, which among other things introduced […] the ellipsis ("...") to indicate menu
by Someone 1y ago
FTA: Another widespread source of influence was IBM Common User Access from 1987, which among other things introduced […] the ellipsis ("...") to indicate menu choices that opened a dialog window.
I think that the Mac, possibly even the Lisa had that before the CUA. https://andymatuschak.org/files/papers/Apple%20Human%20Interface%20Guidelines%201987.pdf https://andymatuschak.org/files/papers/Apple%20Human%20Inter..., page 23: “A dialog box appears whenever the user chooses a menu item that is followed, in the menus itself, by an ellipsis (…)”
- mixmastamyk 1y agoCUA definitely built on and incorporated Mac innovations, some which were built on work at Xerox. Motif/CDE also converged on the same conventions. And it was glorious for twenty years or so.
- einpoklum 1y agoSo... * Do you have a link to the IBM CUA document? * Can you trace a sequence of widely-adopted or highly-regarded documents of this vein, after 1987? And perhaps how they relate?
- selfhoster11 1y agoThere used to be a digital document with the CUA from IBM, but it was taken down.