When was the "Balloon help" idea conceived?
Was it by Xerox people?
Was it before 1989?


http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...30dcef94162a42
>> Balloon Help was first featured in System 7, which
>> released* sometime in 1990. Or was it early '91?

# I think my alpha release came in 1989, but I have
# no idea wh*ich box it's in in my garage . . .


> Re: Date of "(?) Icon pointer HELP" feature
>
> I have a feeling that the following GUI feature (now
> found in Windows, etc.) originated in Xerox PARC in
> the 1970s or with Apple Mac (Classic). Could
> someone confirm the approximate year?
>
> Click on the [?] Icon
> (which optionally changes the mouse pointer to [?])
> Then when you click on a button, a help baloon for
> the button appears.
>
> (I'm just curious. I have no stake in this,
> financial or otherwise.)
>





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Balloon Help was first included in the initial release of OS 6. It was
an internal Apple product. I was the SQA tester for the product.

Tom Anderson

In article <20050202015938.37805.qmail@web52103.mail.yahoo.co m>, T. Z.
<Use-Author-Address-Header@[127.1]> wrote:

>
>
> When was the "Balloon help" idea conceived?
> Was it by Xerox people?
> Was it before 1989?
>
>
>
> http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...930dcef94162a4
> 2
> >> Balloon Help was first featured in System 7, which
> >> released‚ sometime in 1990. Or was it early '91?
>
> # I think my alpha release came in 1989, but I have
> # no idea wh‚ich box it's in in my garage . . .
>
>
> > Re: Date of "(?) Icon pointer HELP" feature
> >
> > I have a feeling that the following GUI feature (now
> > found in Windows, etc.) originated in Xerox PARC in
> > the 1970s or with Apple Mac (Classic). Could
> > someone confirm the approximate year?
> >
> > Click on the [?] Icon
> > (which optionally changes the mouse pointer to [?])
> > Then when you click on a button, a help baloon for
> > the button appears.
> >
> > (I'm just curious. I have no stake in this,
> > financial or otherwise.)
> >
>
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail

"T. Z." <Use-Author-Address-Header@[127.1]> wrote in message news:<20050202015938.37805.qmail@web52103.mail.yah oo.com>...
> When was the "Balloon help" idea conceived?
> Was it by Xerox people?
> Was it before 1989?
>
>
> http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...30dcef94162a42
> >> Balloon Help was first featured in System 7, which
> >> released* sometime in 1990. Or was it early '91?

Interesting fact in this context (and just a little OT): Here in Japan
Matsu****a Electronics is right now trying to stop a software company
called Justsystems from selling their popular Word processing software
"Ichitaro" (well, at least in Japan it's popular, it is in fact the
only real competition for MS Office - apart from OpenOffice, that is).
The reason: Ichitaro supposedly infringes a patent covering a "Balloon
Help" system where you have to click a "Help" icon first to get a help
text about the next icon you click (also see:
http://swpat.blogspot.com for further links).

Hey, I got an idea: I'm just gonna patent the idea of a computer
understanding plain English, maybe in a decade or so I can try to sell
licenses to MS for their voice interface to MS Office 2015 :-))

Cheers,
Roland