Re: [Usability] Re: Menu order.

[Nadyne Mielke <nmielke acm org>]

At 11:41 AM 8/11/2004, Breda McColgan wrote:

[snip]

> I've just checked on my Windows XP machine, and all of the menu items in
> the Programs, Documents, and Settings menus are listed alphabetically:
>   * All submenus are listed first, in alphabetical order.
>   * All individual menu items are listed after the final submenu, again
> in alphabetical order.

Thank you for that clarification.  I didn't get that idea from the original 
post (but I suppose that's obvious). :)

That said, the Programs menu on my Win2k laptop isn't in alphabetic order, 
either.  When a new application is installed, it is appended to the 
applications menu with no regard for any sort of ordering.  (Except 
chronological, I suppose, which is probably less than useful as a long-term 
ordering.  I don't mind it, but that's because I mercilessly rearrange my 
Programs menu if I have to install something on my Windows box.)

Looking over some of the items on my Program menu, I wonder if some 
applications have chosen short names to force them to be grouped together 
when they're in alphabetic order.  For example, one of my submenus has 
Lotus Notes, Lotus WordPro, and the various other Lotus 
applications.  Microsoft does this with its office suite as well.  I 
usually edit these to simply be the name of the application (so "Notes" 
instead of "Lotus Notes"), but that means that WordPro and Notes would be 
separated by OpenOffice if everything were kept in alphabetic order.  I'm 
not arguing whether this would be good or bad, just observing that they 
wouldn't be grouped together.

/nm