Subject: consensus on menu dots? (was Re: Word count nitpicks)
From: Paul Rohr (paul@abisource.com)
Date: Thu Mar 30 2000 - 16:43:07 CST
I think we're close to a consensus that we should keep the dots, but I'd
like to check and be sure...
At 08:10 PM 3/28/00 -0500, Leonard Rosenthol wrote:
> I haven't read the HIG in a while, but the original HIG
>stated that "any menu item that brings up additional user interface -
>and requires user input (even clicking an "OK" button to continue) -
>is to have the ellipsis after it. That's why the About dialog
>usually has it - it brings up a modal dialog in many applications.
Gotcha. It didn't make sense to me that Apple would be violating their own
UI guidelines.
This description would seem consistent with the behavior of just about every
Mac or Windows desktop app I've seen, which is why we chose the current
behavior.
At 09:58 PM 3/28/00 +0200, Joaquín Cuenca Abela wrote:
>The gnome guidelines says that only the menu items that will need
>additional info from the user to achieve its goal must to have ...'s.
>It says too, that the About menu item don't have to have ...'s.
>
>(If we are goint to follow the gnome guidelines or not is another
>history...)
Hmm. I hate to violate HI guidelines for any of our supported platforms,
but it does look like GNOME is the sole outlier.
I suppose we have two options here. For now, I'd propose that we stick to a
single behavior on all platforms, since our current behavior is what most
existing users will expect.
However, if this GNOME interface innovation catches on with users, we can
easily address that. The dots aren't actually stored in a string, they're
controlled by the bRaisesDialog flag in the following file:
src/wp/ap/xp/ap_MenuActionSet.cpp
Adding a policy-specific #define here for the dialogs in question
change the relevant flag in the menu won't be hard to do later on if it's
really needed.
Paul
PS: This debate may seem nit-picky to some, but one of the most encouraging
signals that a product is maturing is that more and more people start paying
close attention to fit-and-finish issues like this. We've still got some
meaty work to finish off, but I can smell 1.0 starting to loom over the
horizon.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Thu Mar 30 2000 - 16:37:38 CST