- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2007 21:10:36 +0000 (UTC)
On Mon, 22 Nov 2004, Matthew Thomas wrote: > > > > It's my understanding that disabling a menu is considered poor form, > > and that it is better to disable all the children. (mpt?) ... > > The terms "disable" and "disabled" are ambiguous for a menu/submenu > title, because making it "disabled" as in dimmed (grayed out) does not > make it "disabled" as in unopenable. So when all the items in a > menu/submenu are unavailable, it's best to make the menu itself > apparently unavailable too. Then people won't waste time by opening the > menu just in case there is an available item inside, but they can still > open the menu to explore the scope of the program if they want to. > > * Windows: "If all items in a menu are disabled, disable its menu > title. If you disable a menu item or its title, the user can still > browse to it or choose it." > http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnwue/html/ch08b.asp > > * Mac OS X: "If all of the items in a menu or submenu are unavailable, > the menu or submenu title is dimmed. The user can still open the > menu, but all of its items are dimmed to indicate that these items > are not available in the present context." > http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/20000957 > > Given that, I approve of giving menus and submenus a "disabled" > attribute that would make all their descendant items unavailable without > forgetting the erstwhile availability of individual descendant items. > This attribute would relieve applications from having to remember the > particular subset of descendant items that were previously available, > during those occasions when they are all temporarily being made > unavailable (for example, a "Format" menu while focus is temporarily in > a plain-text field secondary to the main rich-text area). The idea of the current mechanism, though, is that you can have those same menu items also be a toolbar elsewhere (say), so you'd want to disable the buttons anyway. Wouldn't it be better to have the menus automatically disable submenu titles when appropriate? (Note that the Mac OS X guidelines seem to no longer have the quote you give above.) -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Monday, 6 August 2007 14:10:36 UTC