Re: Use of ellipsis ("...") in menu items

[Calum Benson <calum benson ireland sun com>]

Jörg Rathlev wrote:

> I'd love to see a system that uses a verb in every menu item, and
> consistently uses hints like "...". For example, "Folder settings..."
> should be either "Show Folder settings" (no ellipsis) or "Change
> Folder Settings..." (with ellipsis).

I think the only danger with doing it that way (other than adding extra
words to the menu, which is always nice to avoid) is that it's not
necessarily obvious that "Show Folder Settings" would allow you to
change the settings as well, and equally, that "Change Folder
Settings..." would allow you to inspect the current settings if that's
all you wanted to do, rather than being forced to change them.  

"Folder Settings" on its own is certainly more ambiguous, but
deliberately so, because there are at least two different operations you
might want to perform on those settings (edit or inspect, in this case,
and the dialog itself may offer others, e.g. copy, print...)

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems