Re: [PATCH] Hide clean up by name

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On Mon, 2004-08-30 at 17:22 +0200, Alexander Larsson wrote:

> Its typically considered bad ui when the menu for a specific context
> contains different items depending on some state. The normal thing to do
> then is to use insensitive menu items. I'm sure the HIG has something to
> say on this.

A little, not as much as it could.  But you're right, basically a
context menu should contain the same menu items for objects of the same
type, whatever state the selected instance is in.  State-specific items
are then made sensitive or insensitive as appropriate. 

Part of the fun in any UI design is determining what the user will
regard as objects of the same type, objects of different types, and
different states of the same object.  For example, if you have two icons
in a file manager, one representing an application and one a document,
does the user regard them as two icons (which should therefore behave
quite similarly), or as the application and the document they represent
(which should probably behave quite differently)...?

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             Java Desktop System Group
http://ie.sun.com                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems