Re: [HIG] Settings Menu?

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs noisehavoc org>]

On 04Dec2001 09:40AM (-0800), Constantine Evans wrote:
> Hello,
> 	
> 	How did the Preferences sneak into the Edit menu? The Preferences
> should be in the Settings menu, as with nearly all GNOME programs: look
> at glade, galeon, gtm, procman, etc. Preferences just do not fit into
> the Edit menu: what do Preferences have in common with cutting and
> pasting?
> 
> 	The Settings menu would contain the general Preferences, as well as
> specific Preferences and commonly changed settings.

In applications with many menus but only a single preferences dialog,
devoting a whole menu to one item is wasteful.

User testing at Microsoft and Netscape found that the best choice of
existing menus for preferences was Edit - users thought to themselves,
"I want to edit my preferences". Other past choices for this included
the File or View menus, and these did not work as well.

If an application has more than one dialog for various kinds of
preferences, or general check or radio menu settings that don't fit
into View, Format or other existing menus, then it should have
Preferences menu, with an Edit Preferences item for the standard
preferences dialog.

Using both the terms Settings and Preferences is needlessly confusing,
and we definitely should not do that.

I'll skip the rant on the difference between preferences and settings,
and why the term preferences is better.

 - Maciej