Re: Right-justified help menu?

[sungod <sungod atdot org>]

On Thu, Apr 20, 2000 at 04:07:27AM -0500, Gregory Merchan (merchan@baton.phys.lsu.edu) wrote:
> Perhaps I'm a weirdo, but I expect to see the Help menu on the right of the
> toolbar. I seem to recall that many nix people found this bizarre when Netscape did
> it, but my recollection may be off.
> 
> My reasons are two:
> 
> 1) Once I'm used to the app, I don't want to see a completely useless item
> among useful items.
> 
> 2) Having at least one right justified item has some aesthetic appeal since it
> marks a boundary of the app.
> 
> I also seem to recall reading that placing a single item in isolation make it
> easy to miss so that new users are effectively help-less.  As a remedy to this I
> propose placing the settings item on the right as well. This is based on the
> presumption that once a user has grown accustomed to certain settings, he is
> unlikely to change them in the course of working. This makes the settings item useless
> for much of the apps use.
> 
> Please note that this does not apply to applets which may change many times in
> the course of the day to provide work utilities. (For example, I'll disable
> GnomeICU when deep in thought, or auto-hide the panel when using few apps with few
> windows.) A similar need for changing apps can be satisfied by the preferences
> submenu. This can also provide for programmers a distinction between what should
> be a setting and what should be a preference.

Can you please point us to research you or someone else has done on this topic? We'd very much appreciate seeing whether lab or field research has shown about this opinion. Thanks.
-- 

Everything on television is fake.
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