[GnomeMeeting-devel-list] Re: Usability question

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

On Tue, 2003-01-07 at 15:55, Damien Sandras wrote:

> Do you have an alternate suggestion to have less "empty" menus perhaps
> meaningless in GM's case? For example, would having the "Call" menu as
> main menu be possible? (It would contain the normal operations +
> Preferences/Druid + Quit). What does the HIG foresee for applications
> that do not Edit things or manipulate Files?

If your application doesn't primarily deal with documents, you could and
should name the left-most menu something else... like "Call", as you
suggest.  The relevant guideline from the HIG is:

"If your application does not operate on documents, name the File menu
for the type of object it displays.  For example, many games should have
a Game instead of a File menu.  However, place the Quit menu item last
on this menu nonetheless".

I think the HIG team would still prefer if it "Preferences" (and
probably the druid, without knowing exactly what it does) goes on the
Edit menu though, even if there's not much else there yet.  But, for
example, you might consider filling out the Edit menu with things like
"Copy" anyway, so that the user can copy text from call logs, statistics
readouts or error messages, or from whatever other information areas you
might have in the main window... I haven't been able to install
GnomeMeeting as you know, so I'm just speculating here :/

Cc'ing Greg and Seth in case they disagree with any of the above :)

Cheeri,
Calum.

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

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems