Re: [HIG] REVIEW: My first-pass review of HIG

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

Julian Missig wrote:
> 
> Just a question, really...
> What if I have a Check Menu Item which says "Hide Offline Contacts"
> which is unchecked, and then the user clicks it and it changes to "Show
> Offline Contacts" and has a check mark next to it? The user will see the
> check mark and think that they have "Show Offline Contacts" enabled, no?

I don't think anyone's suggesting that you should ever use both a
checkmark *and* a dynamically-changing menu title at the same time...
that sounds like a recipe for disaster!  I think what Adam was saying is
that the advice should be to use a single CheckMenuItem for individual
on/off settings if the current and alternative states will be obvious,
otherwise use two mutually-exclusive CheckMenuItems (e.g. if the
alternatives aren't really opposites, such as "red" and "green"), or a
single regular menu item with no checkmark, whose label changes
depending on the current state (his "Turn Grid On" and "Turn Grid Off"
example).

At least, I think that's what he meant, although I'm not sure in which
order of preference  :)

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems