RE: ANNOUNCE: Style Guide available for review.

[Paul Hepworth <phepworth s-vision com>]

> Paul> Actually, for reasons such as the consistent File|Exit and
> Paul> Help|About (and other help), it is probably best if ALL apps
> Paul> have the menubar, even "utility" apps.  Of course, the user can
> Paul> choose to unpin the menubar, making it accessible as a pop-up
> Paul> menu instead.
> 
> I think consistency is only a secondary goal when building a user
> interface.  That is, consistency is a tool we use to achieve the real
> goal, which is "ease of use" (as opposed to "ease of learning" --
> which is a distinctly different goal).
> 
> So it makes sense to sacrifice consistency when the ease of use test
> is met through other means.  For instance, we might sacrifice
> consistency if we believe that historical practice requires us not to
> make a certain change (that's pretty vague).  (Perhaps the calculator
> example fits in here.)
> 
Very reasonable.


> I think that, in practice, requiring a menubar everywhere is going to
> look silly.  In particular it's probably bad to have a menubar where
> the menus have very few items.
> 
> E.g., in the case of the `mouse-properties' program, we'd be talking
> about a menubar with File->Exit, Help->About, and Help->Reference.
> That's hardly worth it.
> 
I think it's better than having two help buttons in addition to the
close/etc buttons.
However, a single help button could suffice, I think:  the Help
Reference page(s) would include a link to the About page. 

> And nobody is going to be deeply confused if Help is on a button and
> not on a menu.
> 
(On TWO buttons, but see above.)

> I also think that the first menubar item should not be required to be
> "File".
> 
>   Let me note that other existing style guides (the Motif style
> guide, and the MS style guide) also don't require this.  From the
> Motif guide:
> 
>    If the label File is not appropriate to the context of your
>    application, you can choose a different, more appropriate, label.
> 
I agree.  I am okay with Game / Program / WhateverIsAppropriate.  Of
course, the Exit item must be the last item in the leftmost menu,
whether the leftmost menu is called "file" or not.  Of course, others
feel it should ALWAYS be called File, and it's a battle I'm not willing
to fight.


Paul