Re: pluggable context menus ...

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

On Sat, 2002-10-26 at 12:22, James Willcox wrote:
> On Sat, 2002-10-26 at 14:14, Manuel Clos wrote:
> > Jorn Baayen wrote:
> > 
> > > On Sat, 2002-10-26 at 15:37, Michael Meeks wrote:
> > > >	I think you do have a good point though - which is that that option
> > > >menu is just far too long; my feeling is we should think about
> > > >re-arranging it, and/or removing insensitive items [ restore original
> > 
> > No, as Jorn already pointed, people (me too) expect the options to be 
> > there, even if they are insensitive.
> > 
> > Also, the HIG states that you don't hide insensitive entries.
> 
> So you think we should always show every single action?  And only make
> the ones that apply to the selected file sensitive?  That could equate
> to an insanely long list of insensitive items.....

The HIG, I believe, is primarily referring to top-of-the-app style
menus, which should indeed be static. Context menus should be static to
the extent that they refer to the same object or type of object. So
constant operations that apply to every object, for example "Paste",
should be present in every context menu (but insensitive) even when
there's nothing to paste. *HOWEVER* if an item NEVER applies to the
context menu of a particular object, for example image rotate never
applies to a text file, the context menus for text files should never
have image rotate in them. 

Try not to think of the fact that all the context menus are
"technically" from the same place... context menus for different file
types are for different objects so they can be different (though they
should also be as similar as possible, sorry no precise guideline I can
think of here).

-Seth