Re: [Usability] Find always under Edit menu? (Evolution)

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Mon, 31 Oct 2005, Kalle Vahlman wrote:

> Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2005 15:31:30 +0200
> From: Kalle Vahlman <kalle vahlman gmail com>
> Reply-To: zuh iki fi
> To: usability gnome org
> Subject: Re: [Usability] Find always under Edit menu? (Evolution)
>
> 2005/10/18, Michael Wardle <michael endbracket net>:
> > Does the HIG apply here, or would Evolution be better off moving the
> > Find in Message menu item under Search?
>
> Just to add a reference here, Gedit does not have the find items in
> the Edit menu, but instead in a separate Find menu. Presumably due to
> the number of items being high enough (5) and due to the Edit menu
> being very full already (specially if you have certain plugins on).

Evolution does have very full menus.  A larger reorganisation and
comparative analysis might be beneficial.

According to the Gnome Guidelines:
"Limit top-level menus to a maximum of about 15 items. If you have any
more items than this, consider moving a functionally-related subset of the
items into a submenu or a new top-level menu."
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/1.0/menus.html

Version 2.0 of the Guidelines does not include any recommendations about
having too many menu items.  It does retain a more important bit of
advice:
"Design your menu structure to avoid more than one level of submenus. Deep
menu hierarchies are harder to memorize and physically difficult to
navigate."

There may have been some confusion and people may have seen the two
pieces of advice as contradictory.   I would consider a shallow menu
to be a priority but also urge developers to try and keep some balance
and also try to avoid excessively long menus.

(I'm not going to hunt through bugzilla and CVS to try and find why this
change was made to the Guidelines but I would be interested to know if
anyone else has the time to spare.)

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

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