The oval menu-evolution and evaluation of a widget

This paper describes the development and heuristic evaluation of the oval menu, a widget for use in applications for drawing networks and similar linked structures. It is a variety of pie menu, capable of being organised as a hierarchy and of having its contents updated dynamically. Thus it is suitable for environments where libraries of components are created and used. Care has been taken to optimise it for use as a direct manipulation tool. The oval menu has been implemented for use on PC and PC-compatible computers running Windows and Windows95. It is written in Microsoft Visual C++ and uses the Microsoft Foundation Classes. It is a DLL, and the component libraries it uses are also DLLs, so it is easily adaptable for use by other applications.