Re: Menu guidelines updated

[Adam Elman <aelman users sourceforge net>]

At 4:59 PM +0200 8/21/01, Reinout van Schouwen wrote:
> Hello Adam,
>
> On Thu, 16 Aug 2001, Adam Elman wrote:
>
> >  them as a primary operation.  But if you always have the Quit command
> >  under the File menu, you don't want it to go away either.  It's a
> >  catch-22.
>
> As I see it, a program that runs in GNOME doesn't *have* to have a menu
> bar at all, when the functionality the program provides doesn't require
> it. You still have the close button in the title bar which even newbie
> users can find easily.

Ooh, I _hate_ phrases like "which even newbie users can find easily" 
which don't have accompanying data.  :)  In fact, I imagine with the 
fact that you can switch the "close" button around in both position 
and appearance by switching Sawfish themes (not to mention WMs!), 
this is not in itself an appropriate solution in most cases.

That said, I would agree that menu bars are not always appropriate 
and that if you have a simple app with a single window, a "Close" 
button on the window (as well as the standard close control in the 
title bar) is plenty.  But that doesn't solve the problem with apps 
that _do_ have a menu bar.

>  > 2) Get rid of the "Quit" option altogether; this involves moving much
> >  more towards a document-centric paradigm rather than the current
> >  app-centric one.  This is a little more radical. :)
>
> BTW, just for fun you should take notice how many GNOME apps use 'Exit' or
> 'Close' instead of Quit. There is a need for common terminology here.

Yeah, the HIG will definitely address this, although I'm not sure 
which one we recommend at the moment. :)

>  > a bit unsure about this whole thing. Should we deny the >user the user
> >  the ability to have the same file open in two seperate >windows?
> >
> >  Yes, I think we should, at least through this means.  There are,
>
> IMHO this should be user-selectable behaviour in the GNOME Control
> Centers' User Interface settings, so that power users who would want this
> for some reason are not hindered in what they want to do.

Nope, I totally disagree with that.  The problem is that if you just 
put a setting like this in the Control Center, which is far away from 
where the user might be thinking about doing something like this, 
it'll be difficult to discover.  And if a newbie happens to be using 
somebody else's computer, the behavior for the _same command_ could 
be inconsistent.

As I said, there are other ways to handle this feature.  A "clone 
this window" menu item or button would not be inappropriate, for 
example.  But I believe that the same command should never have two 
different behaviors depending on any "preference" setting.

Adam
--