Re: [HIG] Settings Menu?

[Matthew Thomas <mpt mailandnews com>]

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

Very true. Even where there are a lot of options for a program, it's
easier to edit them in a single dialog than to repeatedly open a menu to
choose various items. (Cue a reminiscence from Calum about how the Amiga
let you toggle multiple boolean menu items without closing the menu,
conveniently forgetting that most apps didn't behave properly if you did so.:-)

Some preferences may need frequent and repeated access suited to a menu
rather than a dialog, but most of these will belong in the `View' menu.
(For those frequent and repeated prefs in Mozilla that don't belong in
`View', I hope to have a `Preferences Bar' which can be toggled on and off.)

> 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.
>...

I doubt that user testing at Microsoft found this, otherwise (barring
not-invented-here syndrome) they'd be using `Edit' > `Preferences...'
across their apps now. Instead, they use `Tools' > `Options...'. (As
I've mentioned before, I have read that Microsoft user testing found
`Options' to be better than `Preferences'.)

User testing at Netscape may have found this, though if their UE
department in 1998 was anything like it is now, I doubt they would have
been capable of testing such a subtle difference with a wide range of users.

User testing at Apple may have found this, but I think their decision
was probably more to do with the fact that the `Edit' menu could always
be relied on to be present (unlike the `View' menu), and putting it in
`Edit' made marginally more sense than putting it in `File'. Mac OS X
apps have `Preferences...' in the {appNameHere} menu to the left of
`File', presumably for the same reason. In the Mac OS 8/9 Finder,
`Edit' > `Preferences...' sets preferences for all folder windows, while
`View' > `Options...' lets you override those preferences for the
currently focused folder window.

All that said, I still think `Edit' is the best place for the item. :-)

-- 
Matthew `mpt' Thomas, Mozilla UI Design component default assignee thing
<http://mozilla.org/>