Re: Menu Guidelines

["k.wetzel" <k wetzel welfen-netz com>]

Hi,

some quick comments:

File:
- “Print” should be “Print…”
- “Print Setup…” could be “Page Setup…”, depending on what it is
   supposed to show.
- Traditionally “Close” was at the end of the first section of
  the “File” menu, counter to “New” and “Open…”, it was MS who put it
  dangerously close to “Exit” ;°) Likewise, ”Close <filename>” should
  be placed there as well, then.
- “Revert” may read “Revert to seaved” to make things more clear (not
  sure).
- “Open Selected” would IMHO be a candidate for an “experimental
  features” section of the guide, rather then a recommendation.
- In addition to “Open Recent  >” you could recommend the
  Windows-like menu section of a few recently opened files.
- Have a menu entry to open files from a “favorite location” 
  below “Open Recent”, this would be user configurable and likely point
  to something like e.g. “~/diagrams/” or whatever and show all files
  with a supported file type in that directory/folder. (experimental
  feature for now)
- Maybe an easy way to switch to “Exit” instead of “Quit” for all GNOME
  apps if KDE is the users default desktop (just kidding)

Edit:
- Maybe “Ctrl-Y” could be reserved for “Redo” as many people may know
  it for that – but your reasoning regarding Ctrl-Shift-Z is good.
- I second the suggestion to put “Find…” under “Edit” and use the 
  Ctrl-F accelerator.
- Ctrl-G seems good for find again.
- Some applications use Ctrl-H for “Search and Replace” if separate 
  for “Find”, but I don’t know how common this is.
- Maybe point out an example of “Undo <action>”, like “Undo Cut”
- Put “Do again” in the “experimental features” section of the guide ?
- I think “Select none” is so easy in most apps that a separate menu 
  entry is just adding clutter to the menu. Or provide a secret 
  “Ctrl-Shift-A” accel but don’t tell the “GUI hall of shame guys ;°>

Options:
- I like “Options -> Preferences…”, but maybe I should read the thread
  you pointed out =°)

Help:
- Place a seperator item above “About <this application>”
- How about an “About GNOME” menu item below “About CoolApp” ?

Additional comments:
- Where applicable the following accelerators should be used:
- Ctrl – B for changing the style of the selected text to “bold”.
- Ctrl – I for changing the style of the selected text to “italics”.
- Possibly Ctrl – U for changing the style of the selected text
  to “italics”. No clue how often this one is used, though.
- F1 beeing help, F2 and above are the most prominent accel keys users 
  may want to reassign. Recommending that F4 defaults to (was 
  it “Find” ?) may comfort migrating users.
- You could point out other common menus and what they are likely to 
  contain in a GNOME app, like “View”, …

- Regarding “Alt-O – O” mnemoncs: This doesn’t work for many lany
  languages as mnemonics are likely to change with localization.

Best regards,
kai

Off-topic: could someone recommend a good GUI email client which offers 
to fetch (POP3 RETR) only the body of messages which pass a filter test 
applied to the mail headers (POP3 TOP) ?