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Re: C-h K and C-h F in the Help menu
From: |
Alan Mackenzie |
Subject: |
Re: C-h K and C-h F in the Help menu |
Date: |
Sun, 21 May 2006 21:04:11 +0000 (GMT) |
Hi, Lennart!
Just sticking my oar in a bit ....
On Sun, 21 May 2006, Lennart Borgman wrote:
>Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>>> Date: Sat, 20 May 2006 23:19:02 +0200
>>> From: Lennart Borgman <address@hidden>
>>> CC: address@hidden
>>> I recently got some comments about the help menu in CVS Emacs from a
>>> long term Emacs user and fan (+15 y usage). One of the comments were
>>> that there are too many things in the help menu.
>> For some value of ``too many'': we have 17 entries there. Why is this
>> bad? Each entry can be useful in specific situations.
>It is a good question. As I understand it the complaints was from a user
>interface view. Such a view is a mixture of logical and psychological
>matters. Neither a logical or a psychological argument is then entirely
>useful on its own even if they on their own are completely valid.
>At first sight one might think that the time to find something in a menu
>is proportional to the length of the menu. I think however that the time
>required rises much faster, but I have not read any research about this.
>As I said before one of the factors is probably the short term memory
>span. This means that clear grouping with horizontal lines will probably
>help (as soon as the user understands the grouping).
I think this is right.
>In the process of trying to grasp the grouping it seems to me that there
>should be a big advantage in fewer items.
>Submenus will reduce the number of items even if there is only two
>subitems and I believe that this will be helpful for the reasons I have
>tried to outline above.
Submenus don't reduce the number of items. They just make some of them
invisible, thus _increasing_ search effort. Activating a menu item when
it is hidden within a sub-menu is much slower than when it is directly
there.
A deep tree structure is fine if you're playing a dungeons and dragons
type game, but can be infuriating if you need to do a depth-first search
to find some "lost" menu item. That's one of the main reasons I detest
most menu interfaces.
The way to reduce the number of items is to reduce the number of items.
If 17 is too many (which I can quite well believe), then categorise them
into "must have", "should have" and "nice to have", and get rid of all of
the last lot. :-)
--
Alan.
- Re: C-h K and C-h F in the Help menu, (continued)
- Re: C-h K and C-h F in the Help menu, Eli Zaretskii, 2006/05/20
- Re: C-h K and C-h F in the Help menu, Richard Stallman, 2006/05/21
- Re: C-h K and C-h F in the Help menu, Luc Teirlinck, 2006/05/21
- Re: C-h K and C-h F in the Help menu, Eli Zaretskii, 2006/05/21
- Re: C-h K and C-h F in the Help menu, Richard Stallman, 2006/05/22
- Re: C-h K and C-h F in the Help menu, Lennart Borgman, 2006/05/22
- Re: C-h K and C-h F in the Help menu, Juri Linkov, 2006/05/21
Re: C-h K and C-h F in the Help menu, Eli Zaretskii, 2006/05/20
- Re: C-h K and C-h F in the Help menu, Lennart Borgman, 2006/05/21
- Re: C-h K and C-h F in the Help menu, Eli Zaretskii, 2006/05/21
- Re: C-h K and C-h F in the Help menu,
Alan Mackenzie <=
- Re: C-h K and C-h F in the Help menu, Lennart Borgman, 2006/05/21
- Re: C-h K and C-h F in the Help menu, Richard Stallman, 2006/05/22
- RE: C-h K and C-h F in the Help menu, Drew Adams, 2006/05/22
- Re: C-h K and C-h F in the Help menu, Lennart Borgman, 2006/05/22
Re: C-h K and C-h F in the Help menu, Eli Zaretskii, 2006/05/22
Re: C-h K and C-h F in the Help menu, Richard Stallman, 2006/05/22
Re: C-h K and C-h F in the Help menu, Eli Zaretskii, 2006/05/22
Re: C-h K and C-h F in the Help menu, Eli Zaretskii, 2006/05/21
Re: C-h K and C-h F in the Help menu, Richard Stallman, 2006/05/21
Re: C-h K and C-h F in the Help menu, Richard Stallman, 2006/05/21