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[lmi] Ellipses in menus
From: |
Greg Chicares |
Subject: |
[lmi] Ellipses in menus |
Date: |
Sat, 17 Oct 2015 13:59:48 +0000 |
User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Icedove/31.3.0 |
I'm thinking of removing the ellipsis for
Help | About
because its dialog is not meaningfully interactive,
and adding ellipses for
File | Default...
File | Preferences...
because theirs are.
The first change seems to be a canonical best practice.
As for the other two, I'm persuaded by the last two
paragraphs here, viz.:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/637683/when-to-use-ellipsis-after-menu-items#2697372
| You can argue for both conventions for both these actions. You can't
| actually change any properties or options without doing some extra
| actions in the dialog that is displayed which assumes that ellipsis
| should be used. However you might just be interested in viewing what
| options or properties that are defined and that would assume that no
| ellipsis is used. Microsoft also acknowledge that there are instances
| when there is ambiguity
|
| "In case of ambiguity (for example, the command label lacks a verb),
| decide based on the most likely user action. If simply viewing the
| window is a common action, don't use an ellipsis." However based on
| this it would make more sense to have ellipsis for Options and
| Properties as it is probably more likely that you want to change a
| property that just view it.
Think of these as
File | Modify default...
File | Change preferences...
because end users rarely if ever treat them as
File | Examine default...
File | View preferences...
I'll entertain objections for twenty-four hours.
- [lmi] Ellipses in menus,
Greg Chicares <=