This is Greyed-out-menu-items-and-a-UI-solution in view mode; [Up]
Date: Sun 26-Nov-1989 12:26:57 From: Unknown Subject: Greyed out menu items -- and a UI solution mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu wrote: > Everything is canned. Too menu-driven. Too many things you "can't do". > Just yesterday I was looking at scanner software on one. The scanner > was attached, the program loaded, but the "scan" item on the menu > was grayed. NEither I nor the gurus had any idea why. The manual > was useless. There is an easy solution to this problem, but no user interface has yet adopted it. LET THE USER HIT GREYED OUT ITEMS! If they hit one, they get an error message explaining why you can't do that. The error messages should be written keeping it firmly in mind that the user WANTS to do that, i.e. it should tell them what they must do to un-grey the item. Eg: "Save or Clear your document before trying to Quit" rather than "You can't Quit with a modified document on the screen". In a normal command-line system, you can try things and the errors will give you feedback on what you are doing wrong. On a Mac, there is no feedback. It's like the "?" error message in V7 "ed". In my experience, there is usually SOME way to make that &*%^$# Mac do the thing you want -- but trying to do the obvious thing (hitting "DO THIS" in the menu) is greyed out and instead you need to do it some other way, involving other menus, command keys, closing windows, or whatever. Wouldn't it be utterly user friendly if trying to do the obvious thing redirected you toward the actions you need to take first or instead? I offered this suggestion to the Mac community -- so far, no takers. Ditto to the Open Look UI definition (in early and late drafts). Mayhaps one way that NeXT can distinguish itself is by listening to ideas that were Not Invented Here. Granted, it won't help *me* if NeXT implements it, since 68030's are too slow for this SPARChound, but some of *you* might benefit.
These are the contents of the former NiCE NeXT User Group NeXTSTEP/OpenStep software archive, currently hosted by Marcel Waldvogel and Netfuture.ch.