Re: Menu Guidelines



Hello Colin,

On Tue, 26 Jun 2001, colin z robertson wrote:

> I've done a little work on menu guidelines which can be found at

[snip]

> What I've got at the moment is a fairly conservative (read
> Windows-ish) set of descriptions of standard menus. The devil's in the
> details though, so read it carefully. (There are a few bits in there
> that aren't currently standard in any environment.)

There is one sentence in your proposal that I will quote here:

-begin quote-
Applications which do not obviously operate on files may rename this menu
to something more appropriate. For example, games may have a "Game" menu
instead of a "File" menu.
-end quote-

I think this is a very important aspect of menu bars. For example, if you
take a good look at the Gnome Calendars' menu bar, it makes little sense.
It has a File menu - but it doesn't operate on files, except under the
hood maybe. In it is an option 'New calendar'. If the menu would have been
called 'Calendar' , it would have been obvious the options in the menu
operate on the Calendar. It goes on with 'Edit'. No Copy, Paste or other
common options, but 'New appointment' and 'New appointment for today'.
Those two options are confusing of themselves, but it is the question if
these options should be in a menu at all (as opposed to a toolbar or
app-space button). They definately don't belong under 'Edit'.

Furthermore, if you are going to have guidelines for menu bars, then you
should have guidelines for popup menus (aka context- or rightclick-menus)
as well. Important as well: when (not) to use cascading submenus!

Lastly, I recommend everyone to browse through Theo Mandels' "The Elements
of User Interface Design". Some interesting quotes regarding menu bars
(pages 206-209):

KEY IDEA! When should (or shouldn't) a window have a menu bar? This is one
of the most frequently asked user interface design questions. The IBM
(1992) guidelines say, "Provide a menu bar when a window will provide more
than six actions or routing choices. Also provide a menu bar if you
provide the functions available in the File, Selected, Edit or View
menus."

KEY IDEA! As seen in usability testing and everyday use, users tend to use
pop-up menus and direct manipulation more frequently in [Object-Oriented
User Interfaces] than in GUIs, where they are more likely to use menu
bars. Menu bars are a transitional interface element as products move from
applications to objects in the interface. OOUI users are quick to learn
that they can get a pop-up menu just by clicking mouse button 2 on /any
object on the screen/.

comments?

--

Reinout van Schouwen
e-mail    : reinout cs vu nl
voicemail : 084-8750706






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