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If the user drags back up to the top, the menu scrolls back down in the same manner. The next time the menu is opened, it appears in its original state (with the indicator at the bottom).

Do not design your application to intentionally include scrolling menus; they should exist only when a user adds many items to a customizable menu or when the menu’s function causes it to have items added to it (for example, the Finder’s Window menu).

Designing the Elements of Menus

Menu elements include words (and sometimes icons) to designate menu titles and menu items, and symbols to designate keyboard shortcuts, hierarchical menus, separators, and the state of some menu items. These elements are illustrated in Figure 13-3.

Figure 13-3 Menu elements

Menu title

Menu item

Submenu

Separator

Hierarchical menu (submenu) indicator

Keyboard equivalent

Ellipsis character

Titling Menus

Menu (and submenu) titles should appropriately represent the items in the menu. For example, a Font menu could contain names of font families, such as Helvetica and Geneva, but it shouldn’t include editing commands, such as Cut and Paste. Avoid using icons for menu titles. Make menu titles as short as possible without their losing clarity.

Naming Menu Items

Menu item names should be either actions performed on an object or attributes applied to an object:

■Actions are verbs or verb phrases that declare the action that occurs when the user chooses the item. For example, Save means savemyfile and Copy means copytheselecteddata. Your action menu commands should begin in the same way, with an action verb in its base (simplest) form.

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■Attributes are adjectives or adjective phrases that describe the change the command implements. Adjectives in menus imply an action and should fit into the sentence “Change the selected object to …” —for example, Bold or Italic.

When a menu item is unavailable—because it doesn’t apply to the selected object or to the selected object in its current state, or because nothing is selected, for example—the item should appear dimmed (gray) in the menu and is not highlighted when the user moves the pointer over it.

Use title-style capitalization in your menus. See “Capitalization of Interface Element Labels and Text” (page 131) for more information on this style.

An ellipsis character (…) after a menu item indicates to the user that additional information is required to complete a command. For information on when to use an ellipsis in menu items, see “Using the Ellipsis Character” (page 127).

It may be appropriate in some cases to provide dynamic menu items—commands that change when the user presses a modifier key. For example, if the user opens the Window menu in the Finder and then presses the Option key, some of the menu items change, as shown in Figure 13-4. The system appropriately sizes the menu to hold the widest item, including Option-enabled commands.

Figure 13-4 Dynamic menu items

Without modifier key pressed

With modifier key pressed

Dynamic menu items are an appropriate way to offer a shortcut to sophisticated users. However, because dynamic menu items are hidden by default, they should never be the only way to accomplish a task. Be sure that you don’t require users to discover a dynamic menu item before they can use your application effectively. To return to the example of the Minimize menu items in the Finder Window menu (shown in Figure 13-4), note that a user who hasn’t discovered the Minimize All command can still minimize all open Finder windows by minimizing each one individually.

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If you decide to offer a dynamic menu item, be sure to require only a single modifier key to reveal it. Requiring more than one additional key press to reveal a dynamic menu item can make it physically awkward for the user and greatly decreases the user’s chances of discovering the key combination.

You can use Interface Builder to define dynamic menu items. You can also do so using Application Kit programming interfaces. Specifically, you can use the setAlternate: method of NSMenuItem to designate one menu item as the alternate of another.

Using Icons in Menus

Youshouldusetext,noticons,foryourapplicationmenutitles. Theoperatingsystemprovidesthreeapplication menus that use icons instead of text for their titles: the Apple menu, the Spotlight search field, and the AppleScript menu, which is displayed if the application has scripts installed. The menu bar status items also are icons. These icons (with the exception of the AppleScript menu) are always visible in the menu bar no matter what application is active, so users learn what these symbols mean. These are unique uses of symbols as menu titles.

You may use icons in menu items if the icon is something the user can learn to associate with specific functionality in your application or if the icon represents something unique. For example, as shown in Figure 13-5, the Finder uses icons in the Go menu because users can associate them with the icons they see in the Sidebar.

Figure 13-5 Icons in the Finder Go menu

Safari also makes use of the standard icons displayed with some webpages to allow users to make the connection between the webpage and the menu item for that webpage, as shown in Figure 13-6.

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Figure 13-6 Icons in the Safari History menu

If you do include icons in your menus, include them only for menu items for which they add significant value; don’t include them for every menu item. A menu that includes too many icons (or poorly designed ones) can appear cluttered and be hard to read.

Using Symbols in Menus

There are a few standard symbols you can use to indicate additional information in menus. These are listed in Table 13-1 and discussed in the following text. Don’t use other, arbitrary symbols in menus, because they add visual clutter and may confuse people.

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Use a dash to indicate that an attribute applies to only part of the selection. For example, if selected text has twostylesappliedtoit,putadashnexttoeachstylename. Whenit’sappropriate,youcancombinecheckmarks and dashes in the same menu. See “Toggled Menu Items” (page 168) for more information on how to use checkmarks and dashes in menus.

Note: Include a menu command, such as Plain, for removing all formatting from mixed-state text.

Use a bullet next to a document with unsaved changes and a diamond for a document the user has minimized into the Dock. A minimized document with unsaved changes should have a diamond only. If the active window has unsaved changes, the checkmark should override the bullet in the Window menu.

Figure 13-7 and Figure 13-8 show some examples of how to use and how not to use symbols in menus.

Figure 13-7 Symbols in menus

Dashes are used to indicate that the selection represents a mixed state (both bold and italic are used).

A diamond indicates that the window has been minimized into the Dock.

A checkmark indicates the active window.

A bullet indicates that the document has unsaved changes.

Figure 13-8 Don’t use arbitrary symbols in menus

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