C H A P T E R 1 3

Menus

Figure 13-11 A hierarchical menu

As with menu titles, a submenu’s title is displayed unchanged even if all of the submenu’s commands are unavailable (dimmed) at the same time. Users should always be able to view a submenu’s contents, whether or not they are available in the current context.

The Menu Bar and Its Menus

The menu bar extends across the top of the main screen and contains pull-down menus. There is only one menu bar at the top of the screen; don’t put menu bars in windows. The menu bar provides a consistent location where people can look for commands. Each application, including the Finder, has its own menu bar consisting of a few standard menus, application-specific menus, and menu extras.

The menu bar:

■Is always visible and available, except in circumstances such as during a slideshow (see discussion below)

■Always contains:

The Apple menu (provided by the operating system)

The Spotlight icon (provided by the operating system)

The application menu (titled with the application name or an appropriate abbreviation if space is limited)

A Window menu

■May contain the following menus, if they make sense in your application:

A File menu

An Edit menu

A Format menu

A View menu

A Help menu

The Menu Bar and Its Menus

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2008-06-09 | © 1992, 2001-2003, 2008 Apple Inc. All Rights Reserved.

C H A P T E R 1 3

Menus

Application-specific menus

■May contain menu bar extras determined by the user

The ordering of application-specific menus in the menu bar should reflect the natural hierarchy of objects in your application. Examine the user’s mental model of the tasks your application performs to help you determine what this natural hierarchy is (see “Reflect the User’s Mental Model” (page 39) for more information on discovering the user’s mental model). For example, if your application helps users create computer animation, the application-specific menus might be Scenes, Characters, Backgrounds, and Projects. Because auserprobablyseestheprojectasahigh-levelentitythatcontainsscenes,eachofwhichcontainsbackgrounds and characters, a natural ordering of these menus is Projects, Scenes, Backgrounds, and Characters.

In general, place the menus that display commands to handle higher-level, more universal objects toward the left of the menu bar and the menus that focus on the more specific entities toward the right.

Figure 13-12 The menu bar displayed when the Finder is active

Finder-specific menu				Spotlight icon

Apple		menu		Application		menu
								Menu bar extras

If there is insufficient room to display all of an application’s menus, the menu bar status items are omitted. If there is still insufficient room to display all menus, the application’s menus may be omitted, starting with the rightmost menu.

If your application can display full-screen images (such as slideshows), you may allow users to hide the menu bar. If you implement this feature, provide a clearly visible way, such as a button, for the user to make the menu bar reappear. If there is no button visible, pressing the Escape key or moving the mouse to the top of the screen should display the menu bar.

A menu’s title is displayed undimmed even if all of the menu’s commands are unavailable (dimmed) at the same time. Users should always be able to view a menu’s contents, whether or not they are currently available.

Figure 13-13 A menu title is undimmed, even when all items are unavailable

	The following sections discuss the individual menus in the menu bar. The sections are listed in the order that
	the menus should appear in the menu bar. With the exceptions of the Apple menu (provided by the system),
	the application menu, and the Window menu, all other menus are optional.
172	The Menu Bar and Its Menus

2008-06-09 | © 1992, 2001-2003, 2008 Apple Inc. All Rights Reserved.