Re: HIG says "Page Setup" not "Page Setup..."

["Matthew Thomas" <mpt myrealbox com>]

On Feb 5, 2008, at 10:30 AM, Shaun McCance wrote:
> Following is a list of some menu items in Nautilus that, for
> one reason or another, open another window.

Summary: Opening a new window is neither necessary nor sufficient for a 
control label to have an ellipsis. What's important is the user's 
primary intended goal, and whether completing it will require further 
input.

For example, the primary intended goal of someone choosing "Page 
Setup..." is to change the page setup. (The goal is not to open a 
window; that's just a means to the end.) Changing the page setup 
requires further input. Therefore, the item should have an ellipsis.

> For clarity's sake, could you tell me which ones you would put
> ellipses on?
>
> File -> Open Parent

Primary intended goal: Open the parent folder. Requires further input: 
No. Therefore: No ellipsis.

> Places -> Home (Computer, etc.)

Primary intended goal: Open the Home (etc) folder. Requires further 
input: No. Therefore: No ellipsis.

(In both these cases you could object that opening a folder isn't a 
goal in itself, it's a small step towards another goal. But that end 
goal could be any of thousands of different things, and we can't have 
menu items for all of them. The most we can be confident of is that you 
want to open the folder, so that's what the menu item refers to.)

> Places -> Edit Bookmarks

Primary intended goal: Modify the bookmarks. Requires further input: 
Yes. Therefore: Ellipsis.

(If a common reason for opening the bookmarks window is to open a 
particular bookmark, without making any changes, then the menu item is 
misnamed. If so, it should be "Show Bookmarks" or simply "Bookmarks", 
without ellipsis.)

> Help -> Contents

Primary intended goal: Show the table of contents for the help pages 
for the current program. Requires further input: No. Therefore: No 
ellipsis.

At this point you should be saying, "Waaaait a minute. That's not a 
real goal!" Apart from help developers, nobody is actually interested 
in seeing a table of contents for help pages. What they *really* want 
is to get help with using the software. The table of contents is just a 
means to that end. Therefore, the menu item is badly worded.

"Get Help With Using NameOfApp" would be too long in English (and 
removing any of those words produces ambiguity), so the next best label 
is probably "NameOfApp Help". Primary intended goal: Solve a problem, 
or find out how to do something. Requires further input: Yes (except in 
the rare programs simple enough to have only one page of help). 
Therefore: Ellipsis.

As far as I can tell, "Help" > "Contents" in Gnome is an imitation of 
Windows versions 3.0 through 98, which forced people to choose between 
"Help" > "Contents" and "Help" > "Index" without having a clue which of 
those would solve their problem. Microsoft have corrected this 
user-hostile approach in the Windows Vista UX Guidelines: they 
recommend that a "Help" menu contain only "<program name> help", a 
separator, and "About". The Gnome HIG needs fixing here too.

> Help -> About

Primary intended goal: Show information about the current version of 
the program. Requires further input: No. Therefore: No ellipsis.

("About" is dodgy wording, though not nearly as bad as "Contents". 
"About This Version" would be clearer, though that might make it unduly 
prominent.)

Cheers
--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/