[AStonesThrow]

Oh man, I was so fascinated and enthralled by the mere concept of radial menus, back in the 90s when I was using twm (and its cousins) on Sun workstations.

Just to imagine that whatever clod had invented the one-dimensional "context/dropdown" menus, had somehow won forever and always over the extremely logical choice of a radial, I just couldn't understand how.

The only explanation would have been that a radial menu is more difficult to typeset and render onscreen if you're rotating/sizing fonts and images around 360°.

[hauken]

Totally agree that radial menus feel so natural for quick tool switching and expert workflows — that’s what inspired Pie Menu.

That said, for dense context menus and dropdowns, I think linear lists are actually faster to scan.