Re: Hide NSMenuItem
Re: Hide NSMenuItem
- Subject: Re: Hide NSMenuItem
- From: Erik Buck <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 19:31:37 -0700 (PDT)
IMHO, it is almost never appropriate to remove or hide
menu items that are sometimes available. If you let
it, Cocoa will automatically disable any menu item for
which there is no appropriate responder in the current
responder chain.
Just let the menu items become disabled or enabled
when the user selects different windows.
There are lots of good reasons:
1) the discovery principle - how will users know that
a new menu item has become available if they have
never sen it before. If the item is always present
but sometimes disabled, the user at least knows it is
sometimes available.
2) Muscle memory = like it or not, one theory for
having a single menu at the top of the screen is so
that users become used to moving the mouse to a
spatially consistent location. Their muscles remember
where the desired feature is. If you remove or hide
menu items, you are screwing with the user's muscle
memory.
3) The principle of least surprise - on the Mac, it is
uncommon and probably unacceptable to have menu items
appear or disappear. That behavior will surprise
users.
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