Menus

["Wesley Felter" <wesf cs utexas edu>]

Hi, I'm new to the list (but I've read the list archives and the IRC transcript). I've been a long-time Mac user and more recently and NT user, so that's where I'm coming from.

Here's my thoughts on menus. You can take this as a proposal if you want.

I like the idea of a GNOME (icon) menu, but I'm not sure about placing it first in the menubar, since it doesn't appear to contain the most frequently-used choices. However, one could say that since the icon is not very wide, it's almost like the "zeroth" menu and thus is an exception.(sort of like the Apple menu on MacOS; I don't think of it as a regular menu because it's always there) The GNOME menu is great from a branding perspective: users can immediately identify GNOME apps.

About and Exit (or Quit if you prefer) would be good choices for the GNOME menu. I'm not sure where Preferences should go.

The first regular menu should definitely be "File" IMO. I don't want it to be different for each app; that's just confusing. (should this be a level 2 requirement?)

Likewise, I'm used to seeing "Edit" as the second menu, even in apps that don't support any editing. Mac apps don't usually have problems with running out of menubar space because the menubar is the width of the entire screen, so they can afford to include extra menus. The Edit menu should be required to contain Cut, Copy and Paste, even if they're always disabled (level 2?). Undo, Redo and Select All sound like good reccomendations for the Edit menu (level 3?).

The last menu should probably be a Help menu. The downside to a help menu is that it will probably only contain one or two items. The upside is that the user immediately sees the word "Help" and knows where to go. I think this is why Apple changed from using an icon to the word "Help" for their help menu. Since it will probably be a level 2 or 3 requirement for apps to supply some sort of online help, maybe help should go in the GNOME menu.

I don't like the idea of a Program menu. First, I can't tell if "Program" is a noun or a verb. I personally never use the word "program" as a noun; for that purpose I say "application". So if I saw a Program menu, I'd say "I don't want to program anything!". However, if you have an Application menu, you're using up a lof of menubar space (and I wouldn't know what to expect to find inside an Application menu.)

None of these ideas are very radical, because I think an effective style guide just codifies design practices that are known to be usable instead of coming up with stuff that has never been implemented before.

Wesley Felter - wesf@cs.utexas.edu - Hack the Planet
"Division is the new world order." --Rancid