Chapter 4. Menus

The Menubar
Types of Menu
Drop-down Menus
Submenus
Popup Menus
Designing a Menu
Grouping Menu Items
Types of menu item
Standard Menus
File
Edit
View
Insert
Format
Bookmarks
Go
Windows
Help

Menus present the whole range of an application's commands to the user, and often a subset of its preferences. When designing a new application, place common menu items in the same locations as they appear in other applications, as this makes it much easier for the user to learn.

In most applications, only primary windows should have a menubar. Utility windows and dialogs should be simple enough that their functions can be provided by controls such as buttons placed within the window.

Occasionally, however, a utility window or dialog is so complex that there would be too many such controls. In this case, you may use a menubar provided that:

Guidelines

The Menubar

Figure 4.1. A typical menubar

A typical application menubar, showing File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Go, Bookmarks, Tools, Windows and Help menus

The menubar provides a number of drop-down menus. Only the menu titles are displayed, until the user clicks on one of them.

The menubar is normally visible at all times and is always accessible from the keyboard, so make all the commands available in your application available on the menubar.

[Note]Full screen mode

When your application is running in full screen mode, hide the menubar by default. However, make its menus and items accessible from the keyboard as usual. Pressing ESC should cause the application to leave full screen mode. A Leave Fullscreen button should be placed in the upper right hand corner of the window. The button should disappear after the mouse is unused for 5 seconds, and should appear again when the moused is moved. Alternately, in applications where the mouse is used frequently in full screen mode, all but a two pixel row of the button may be slid off the top of the screen. The button should slide back on the screen when the mouse moves near it.

Guidelines

  • Provide a menubar in each primary application window, containing at least a File and a Help menu.

  • Organize menu titles in the standard order— see the section called “Standard Menus”

  • Do not disable menu titles. Allow the user to explore the menu, even though there might be no available items on it at that time.

  • Menu titles on a menubar are single words with their first letter capitalized. Do not use spaces in menu titles, as this makes them easily-mistaken for two separate menu titles. Do not use compound words (such as WindowOptions) or hyphens (such as Window-Options) to circumvent this guideline.

  • Do not provide a mechanism for hiding the menubar, as this may be activated accidentally. Some users will not be able to figure out how to get the menu bar back in this case.