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■Select All: Highlights every object in the document or window, or all characters in a text field.

Command-A should be reserved as the keyboard equivalent for the Select All command.

■Find: Finds specified text. In some cases—if the application is finding a file on the Internet, for example—it might make more sense to put this command in the File menu. When appropriate, your application should also contain Find Again and Find/Replace commands.

Command-F should be reserved as the keyboard equivalent for the Find command; Command-G should be reserved for Find Again.

The View Menu

The View menu provides commands that affect what users see in a window. In the Finder, for example, the View menu contains commands for displaying windows as columns, icons, or lists.

Commands for showing, hiding, and customizing a toolbar belong in the View menu. Create a View menu for these commands even if your application doesn’t need to have other commands in the View menu. Show/Hide Toolbar should appear right above Customize Toolbar. The Show/Hide Toolbar commands are provided so that people using full keyboard access can implement these functions with the keyboard.

Avoid using the View menu to display utility windows (such as tool palettes); use the Window menu instead.

The Window Menu

The Window menu contains commands for managing an application’s windows. The menu should list an application’s open document windows, including minimized windows, in the order in which they were opened. If a document contains unsaved changes, a bullet should appear next to its name.

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C H A P T E R 4

Menus

Figure 4-10 A Window menu

Mac OS X does not automatically add utility windows to the list in the Window menu. You can add a command to the Window menu to show or hide utility windows in your application.

The Minimize and Zoom commands are provided in the Window menu so that people using full keyboard access can implement these functions with the keyboard. Even if your application consists of only one window, include a Window menu for the Minimize command.

Window menu items should appear in this order: Minimize, Zoom, <separator>, <application-specific window commands>, <separator>, Bring All to Front (optional), <separator>, <list of open documents>. The Close command should appear in the File menu, below the Open command.

Bring All to Front brings forward all of an application’s open windows, maintaining their onscreen location, size, and layering order. You can make this command an Option-enabled toggle with Arrange in Front, which brings forward all of the application’s windows in their current layering order and changes their location and size so they are neatly tiled. Users can also bring all of an application’s windows to the front by clicking its icon in the Dock. See “Window Layering” (page 70).

Starting with Mac OS X version 10.2, users can cycle forward or backward through active document windows using Command-~ (tilde) or Shift-Command-~. Cocoa applications automatically inherit this behavior; Carbon developers must handle appropriate menu commands.

62Standard Pull-Down Menus (The Menu Bar)

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Menus

The Help Menu

If your application provides onscreen help, the Help menu should be the rightmost menu of your application’s menus. The first item is the name of the application and the word “Help” (Mail Help, for example). If necessary, you can add more items to the Help menu. For information about creating help content, see “User Help and Assistants” (page 235).

Menu Bar Status Items

Reserved for use by Apple, the right side of the menu bar may contain items that provide feedback on and access to certain hardware or network settings. The icon for the battery strength indicator, for example, dynamically displays the current state of the battery; clicking the icon displays a menu for changing common battery settings. Users can display or hide a menu bar status item in the appropriate preferences pane.

Important

Don’t create your own menu bar status items. Use the Dock menu functions to open a menu from your application’s icon in the Dock.

If there is not enough room in the menu bar to display all menus, menu bar status items are removed first.

Other Menus

You can add your own application-specific menus as appropriate. If your application provides functions for formatting text, you can include a Format menu. The first item in the Format menu should be Show Fonts, which displays the

Mac OS X Fonts window. If your application provides support for colors, it should use the system Colors window, accessible via a Show Colors menu command. (In Carbon applications, use the GetColor function; in Cocoa, use NSColorPanel.) Avoid creating your own windows for choosing fonts and colors.

Apple Computer, Inc. June 2002