Agent Balloons
Ivan-Mark Debono
Is there a way to make the Agent 2.0 Balloons like the Office Assistant
balloons, like to include buttons, textboxes, radio buttons??
Tks,
Ivan
Microsoft Agent
balloon. This is for several reasons:
1. It is kind of a broken metaphor to suggest input in an output mechanism.
2. It would increase the size of Agent to include this support.
3. There are already established mechanisms for putting up user interfaces
for gathering using input. Conventional dialog boxes are not only already
supported by the operating system (even for web pages), but are familiar to
users. There is no usability data that indicates that adding controls in a
balloon makes it more attractive.
4. Office balloon were designed before there was support for talking
characters. With spoken output, word balloons are not a necessary mechanisms
to support the character speaking.
Ivan-Mark Debono <ivan...@maltanet.net> wrote in message
news:OWtSaliF$GA.225@cppssbbsa03...
Anibal Maffioletti Rodrigues de DEUS
but you can see that lots of us want input from ballons. In my case, it is a
simple thing: know who are you answering to!
Isnt the Agent the proposer of a new interface ? the conversacional
interface ?
if a conversacional interface is like in an human interface, we must know
who are we talking to...
what about this feature in a new version of MS Agent (3 or 2.x) ??
ok, but for now we (at least I) need a free version of balloon for input,
because I am using Agent as a research project, and we dont have money to
make this kind of acquisition...
so, why dont Microsoft licences its version of balloon that works in
Office2000 to Agent developers ?
I think it is a good idea.... if possible, all of us (in the newsgroup) can
make a poll...
[]'s
DEUS
Microsoft Agent <msag...@microsoft.com> escreveu nas notícias de
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Microsoft Agent
obligate the company to make other technology available, especially if it is
not clear that mechanism provides the best solution for moving forward on a
conversational interface. Further, as suggested in my last post, if you want
to support input to the character, there are already existing mechanisms in
Windows that do this and do it in a way that is very familiar and much
richer than the Office Assistant balloon. The Office balloon is essentially
a rework of a dialog box. The shape and form of it make it no more
advantageous or usable as an input mechanism to users. With the balloon you
are at an input mechanism that was borrowed from the ill-fated Microsoft
Bob. From the start, Agent's goals were to go beyond that type of
implementation.
We also have to clarify what we are talking about here. Controls for input
are the easy problem to solve. The Office code obviously has more behind it
than just the ability to display a bunch of controls. It has a parsing
mechanism that provides an index into help files. Even so, it is not really
a good mechanism to support dialogue.
We are definitely considering input mechanisms for future versions of Agent,
but our plans go far beyond just what's presented in the Office balloons.
In the interim, if you feel compelled to use controls in a word balloon, a
third party solution already exists.
Anibal Maffioletti Rodrigues de DEUS <de...@atlas.ucpel.tche.br> wrote in
message news:3dqN3.45$pf1...@newsfeed.slurp.net...
Anibal Maffioletti Rodrigues de DEUS
> Microsoft already freely licenses Agent. Doing so does not necessarily
> obligate the company to make other technology available, especially if it
is