unity-design team mailing list archive

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Arian van Gend wrote on 09/11/10 12:16:
>
> The File menu should probably not be used on a lot of applications,
> since they don't do anything with files.
> The calculator can easily do without it, for example.
> Besides, the File menu has been overloaded with actions that have
> nothing to do with files anyway, and should therefore at least be
> cleaned up.

As a menu title, "File" is not a noun. It's a verb, just like "Edit",
"View", "Go", "Insert", and "Format" are.

So it's not necessarily about dealing with files. It's about filing or
organizing whatever primary object the program deals with: Web pages,
e-mail messages, calculations, pictures, music, games, or whatever.

> As long as for example in the case of Rythmbox, 'Music' would not be an
> overloaded menu (doesn't practically everything it does have to do with
> music?), it would be an acceptable name for a menu. But that would mean
> that closing an app, printing, and whatever other non music-related
> actions should NOT be there.

As you suggest, Rhythmbox having a "Music" menu doesn't make sense,
because almost all the items in its first four menus are about music.
Only some of them, however, are about filing and organizing.

As for "closing an app", the main reason any program has a menu item for
that is that the original Macintosh couldn't multitask, so people needed
to manually "quit" an app before launching a new one. Designers have
been cargo-culting the "Quit" or "Exit" item ever since -- and putting
it in the first menu only because there was no better place for it.

Some applications have already retired the "Quit" item, for example
Evince and Epiphany. We're taking another step to phasing it out with
our sound menu design: quitting a music player is not something users
should care about, but rather something that the player does
automatically if it isn't playing when it is closed.

>...
> 2010/11/9 Walter Wittel <wittelw@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:wittelw@xxxxxxxxx>>
>>
>> Taking Calculator as an example, I personally prefer "File". Putting
>> Copy / Paste / etc. there means I can now no longer look to Edit menu
>> on any application to find this common functionality. Might as well
>> have Menu 1, Menu 2, etc. because I'll have to open it up to discover
>> the functions.
>...

Agreed, Calculator should have an "Edit" menu. One side-effect of the
global menu bar is that it will make silly inconsistencies like that
more obvious.

- -- 
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/
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