Question: Why Pie Menus?

Answers:

• Pie Menus are much faster and more reliable than linear menus, because all of the items have large wedge shaped target areas, and each one is located adjacent to the cursor, but in a different direction.
• Several free pie menu implementations are available as open source, reusable, customizable components, that synergistically leverage the capabilities of XML, DHTML, JavaScript, ActiveX, Internet Explorer, Firefox, SVG, Flash and Laszlo.
• Pie Menus can be specified in XML, so designers can easily understand and create them in a text editor, as well as automatically generating pie menus on the "SOA" web server or "AJAX" browser client, using XML processing tools like XSL.
• Pie menus are easy to configure and customize in many ways, with default attributes that can be easily overridden and specified for a whole menu or any individual item.
• Pie menus are rendered with Dynamic HTML (or SVG or Flash), which defines the appearance of the pie menu center and items, that is embeded inside of the XML specification, and can be dynamically modified in response to tracking events.
• Pie menus provide automatic adaptive layout (good look), and versatile reliable tracking (good feel), with callback hooks to provide rich real-time interactive application specific feedback (direct manipulation).
• Pie Menus are tightly integrated with the Internet Explorer web browser and ActiveX scripting environment (and OpenLaszlo), so they can leverage all of its capabilities, present and future.
• Pie Menus are FREE and UNRESTRICTED, so you may use them freely, and modify the source code as well as the design for your own purposes, even in commercial products and web sites.