Help menu: Findings and thoughts

[Gregory Merchan <merchan baton phys lsu edu>]

After much searching with Google and through paper books, I have been unable to
find any rationale for the justification of the help menu. I have not yet done a
search through the bibliographic references provided in the books and articles
that I've seen; it will probably be a while before I can do that.

As noted by Alan Shutko and sungod, a good reason to right justify the help
menu on the Mac menu bar is that it is near one of the five magic points (which are
under the cursor and the four corners). These are special points because of
Fitts' Law. Since most X window mangers create a bar above windows, and often the
close button is near the top right corner, Fitts' law would demand that a right
justified menu item (for left to right languages) be considered at a
disadvantage. Overshooting the item and hitting close would be most unfortunate. However, if
GNOME ever emulates the universal menubar of the Mac, then placing an important
item in the top right corner of the screen (assuming no connected desktop area
beyond it) would be advantageous. The sensitive area of the menu bar would have
to be increased to span the complete height as well.

It has occurred to me that "Information" may be a superior label for the Help
menu. It is a larger word than "help" in at least the romance languages and so
creates a larger target area. Since "About" is usually placed in this menu and
some other items are more 'educational' them helpful, the label "Information" would
also be more descriptive.

A final question. Has anyone looked at the trade-off between a menu bar vs. a
pop-up menu? The menu bar provides few (if any) advantages by Fitts' Law and a
button3 pop-up menu would be at a magic point. It would be a 'hidden feature', but
one that would be quickly learned if used by all apps; it could be 'unhidden'
by providing an info dialog in the initial run of the app. An immediately
apparent problem would be the lengthening of context sensitive menus and that the
contents of the menu would change. The GIMP and Dia already have this to some extent,
though they retain the menubar.

Well, back to learning how to code or sleeping, whichever comes first . . z
Greg Merchan