Re: Menu guidelines updated



Hello Adam,

Adam Elman wrote:

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


This is taken from personal experience; each year I see firstyear students using CDE for the first time. When they want to close a window, they'll first click the top right button (which is Maximize in CDE). Realizing that it doesn't do what they intended, they click the Minimize button next to it. Since the window has now disappeared they do not realize the program is still running, even though the iconified window is still present on the desktop. This results in people having their desktops completely cluttered with iconified terminal windows etc. :)

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.


In the discussion about instant-apply dialogs you say:

>--begin quote--<
I've gone back and forth on this a couple of times, but I think this is correct for object property dialogs.

Basically, you don't need "Cancel" or "OK" or anything like that, since the dialog is instant-apply. If it applies to a document, you don't need an "Undo" button either since that functionality should already be available from the document. So the only button you might need is "Close". And that's redundant with the close button that the WM provides (or at least should provide).
>--end quote--<

So am I right in concluding that you changed your opinion on this subject?

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.


I'm curious what you think about apps like Gkrellm and XMMS. The latter draws its own mini-titlebar, the former doesn't even have that but its functions can only be accessed through a context menu. This may seem bad UI design, but those two apps are a typical example of programs that someone would want to run in a corner of his screen, occupying minimal desktop space. A titlebar, menu or close button would take an unacceptable(?) amount of extra space. Seen from this perspective, the lack of obvious ways to manipulate the program actually adds to its functionality! Or do you disagree?

[multiple windows, same document]

difficult to discover. And if a newbie happens to be using somebody else's computer, the behavior for the _same command_ could be inconsistent.


ok, I'm convinced about that.


--

Reinout van Schouwen
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