• One of the most exasperating GUI features

    From Sylvia Else@21:1/5 to All on Sun Jan 23 19:58:57 2022
    The greyed out menu option.

    It's there. I want to select it, but it's disabled.

    Why?

    Presumably the program knows, but it doesn't let on. I'm meant to be
    able to guess what I have to do to enable it.

    In some software that I've developed, hovering over a greyed out menu
    option cause a tip to be displayed stating the reason it's greyed out.

    I wish that were standard practice. It would alleviate a major cause of baldness.

    Sylvia.

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  • From Meredith Montgomery@21:1/5 to Sylvia Else on Wed Feb 2 10:10:33 2022
    Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> writes:

    The greyed out menu option.

    It's there. I want to select it, but it's disabled.

    Why?

    Presumably the program knows, but it doesn't let on. I'm meant to be
    able to guess what I have to do to enable it.

    In some software that I've developed, hovering over a greyed out menu
    option cause a tip to be displayed stating the reason it's greyed out.

    I wish that were standard practice. It would alleviate a major cause
    of baldness.

    You wish that most people would actually have a passion for what they do
    for a living. But the world is depressed in every sense of the word.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Ian McCall@21:1/5 to Meredith Montgomery on Wed Feb 2 13:21:38 2022
    On 2 Feb 2022, Meredith Montgomery wrote
    (in article <86k0ed9zxy.fsf@levado.to>):

    Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> writes:

    The greyed out menu option.

    It's there. I want to select it, but it's disabled.

    Why?

    Presumably the program knows, but it doesn't let on. I'm meant to be
    able to guess what I have to do to enable it.

    In some software that I've developed, hovering over a greyed out menu option cause a tip to be displayed stating the reason it's greyed out.

    I wish that were standard practice. It would alleviate a major cause
    of baldness.

    You wish that most people would actually have a passion for what they do
    for a living. But the world is depressed in every sense of the word.

    Far, far back in the mists of time there were the Apple Human Interface Guidelines, a superb manual of UI design which was current around System 6
    era (err....88-90?), and for which I then got the System 7 supplement.

    System 7 introduced the idea of “balloon help”, now known universally as tooltips. Every GUI element was meant to have balloon help associated with
    it, and if you turned on Balloon Help on the menu then hovering your mouse cursor near an element, including menu options, would pop up a balloon describing what it did and why.

    I spent quite a lot of effort making sure my stuff had all of this working
    and working well. Other people...hmm...rather less so. So yes, I feel the
    pain here particularly since efforts have been made for a long long time to provide easy ways for developers to sort this.

    Cheers,
    Ian

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  • From Anssi Saari@21:1/5 to Sylvia Else on Wed Feb 2 16:00:58 2022
    Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> writes:

    The greyed out menu option.

    It's there. I want to select it, but it's disabled.

    Why?

    Presumably the program knows, but it doesn't let on. I'm meant to be
    able to guess what I have to do to enable it.

    I remember there used to be a list of awful GUI design elements and this
    was there, near the top? GUI hall of shame? Can't find it now.

    I have to say this doesn't come up that often in my computer usage. In
    fact, I can't come up with any specific app where this happens. Am I so
    jaded I don't even notice or could it be this isn't that common?

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  • From Spiros Bousbouras@21:1/5 to Dan Espen on Wed Feb 2 16:07:03 2022
    On Wed, 02 Feb 2022 10:37:06 -0500
    Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:
    Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> writes:

    The greyed out menu option.

    It's there. I want to select it, but it's disabled.

    Why?

    Presumably the program knows, but it doesn't let on. I'm meant to be
    able to guess what I have to do to enable it.

    In some software that I've developed, hovering over a greyed out menu option cause a tip to be displayed stating the reason it's greyed out.

    I wish that were standard practice. It would alleviate a major cause
    of baldness.

    So, in your world there is no reason for a grayed out menu.

    I don't think that follows from Sylvia's post. I think her complaint is
    that no reason is displayed as to why the menu is greyed out.

    I use Fvwm. Fvwm grays out menu entries when MWM hints say the
    operation is not allowed.

    Explain why that is not the best option.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Dan Espen@21:1/5 to Sylvia Else on Wed Feb 2 10:37:06 2022
    Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> writes:

    The greyed out menu option.

    It's there. I want to select it, but it's disabled.

    Why?

    Presumably the program knows, but it doesn't let on. I'm meant to be
    able to guess what I have to do to enable it.

    In some software that I've developed, hovering over a greyed out menu
    option cause a tip to be displayed stating the reason it's greyed out.

    I wish that were standard practice. It would alleviate a major cause
    of baldness.

    So, in your world there is no reason for a grayed out menu.

    I use Fvwm. Fvwm grays out menu entries when MWM hints say the
    operation is not allowed.

    Explain why that is not the best option.

    --
    Dan Espen

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  • From C Mercadal@21:1/5 to Ian McCall on Wed Feb 2 15:52:01 2022
    On 2022-02-02, Ian McCall <ian@eruvia.org> wrote:
    (snip)
    System 7 introduced the idea of ?balloon help?, now known universally as tooltips. Every GUI element was meant to have balloon help associated with it, and if you turned on Balloon Help on the menu then hovering your mouse cursor near an element, including menu options, would pop up a balloon describing what it did and why.

    I spent quite a lot of effort making sure my stuff had all of this working and working well. Other people...hmm...rather less so. So yes, I feel the pain here particularly since efforts have been made for a long long time to provide easy ways for developers to sort this.

    Cheers,
    Ian

    I never programmed much on the classic Macintosh, but I was a Mac
    user back then and I remember hearing that balloon help was rather
    difficult to implement. Like, that it was in some way onerous to
    actually get to work.

    Was that true?

    Best regards,
    Charles

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  • From Dan Espen@21:1/5 to Spiros Bousbouras on Wed Feb 2 12:40:18 2022
    Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> writes:

    On Wed, 02 Feb 2022 10:37:06 -0500
    Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:
    Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> writes:

    The greyed out menu option.

    It's there. I want to select it, but it's disabled.

    Why?

    Presumably the program knows, but it doesn't let on. I'm meant to be
    able to guess what I have to do to enable it.

    In some software that I've developed, hovering over a greyed out menu
    option cause a tip to be displayed stating the reason it's greyed out.

    I wish that were standard practice. It would alleviate a major cause
    of baldness.

    So, in your world there is no reason for a grayed out menu.

    I don't think that follows from Sylvia's post. I think her complaint is
    that no reason is displayed as to why the menu is greyed out.

    I see, I think you are right.
    I'm not quite sure of the best method a program could use to explain a
    menu entry being gray though.

    Maybe a tool tip that pops up while the entry is selected? Still I'd
    want the menu to indicate the choice is no good before someone tries to
    use the entry.

    Certainly, there won't be room in the menu for a message and I don't think removing
    the option is the right choice.

    --
    Dan Espen

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Ian McCall@21:1/5 to C Mercadal on Wed Feb 2 19:20:49 2022
    On 2 Feb 2022, C Mercadal wrote
    (in article <ste9b1$niu$1@dont-email.me>):

    On 2022-02-02, Ian McCall<ian@eruvia.org> wrote:
    (snip)
    System 7 introduced the idea of ?balloon help?, now known universally as tooltips. Every GUI element was meant to have balloon help associated with it, and if you turned on Balloon Help on the menu then hovering your mouse cursor near an element, including menu options, would pop up a balloon describing what it did and why.

    I spent quite a lot of effort making sure my stuff had all of this working and working well. Other people...hmm...rather less so. So yes, I feel the pain here particularly since efforts have been made for a long long time to provide easy ways for developers to sort this.

    Cheers,
    Ian

    I never programmed much on the classic Macintosh, but I was a Mac
    user back then and I remember hearing that balloon help was rather
    difficult to implement. Like, that it was in some way onerous to
    actually get to work.

    Was that true?

    ‘Ish. It was easy enough if you only cared about System 7. The difficulty
    was making the API calls correct for System 6 as well (I seem to remember Gestalt Manager for checking if features existed, though that might have been
    a later thing).

    The main thing though was faffing in ResEdit. ResEdit was a double-edged
    sword, some people -loved- graphical editing of their resources and code, others were more “bah humbug” and wanted to programmatically create. Most of the API calls assumed you were using ResEdit and it was a pain to
    construct them purely programmatically.

    I switched between the two groups depending what I was doing/mood I was in at the time. Sometimes loved it, sometimes hated it.

    Cheers,
    Ian

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  • From Computer Nerd Kev@21:1/5 to Dan Espen on Wed Feb 2 22:18:26 2022
    Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:
    Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> writes:

    On Wed, 02 Feb 2022 10:37:06 -0500
    Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:
    Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> writes:

    In some software that I've developed, hovering over a greyed out menu
    option cause a tip to be displayed stating the reason it's greyed out. >>> >
    I wish that were standard practice. It would alleviate a major cause
    of baldness.

    So, in your world there is no reason for a grayed out menu.

    I don't think that follows from Sylvia's post. I think her complaint is
    that no reason is displayed as to why the menu is greyed out.

    I see, I think you are right.
    I'm not quite sure of the best method a program could use to explain a
    menu entry being gray though.

    Maybe a tool tip that pops up while the entry is selected? Still I'd
    want the menu to indicate the choice is no good before someone tries to
    use the entry.

    I usually encounter these sorts of things in graphical editor
    software (image editing, 3D modelling, etc.), where the function is
    only enabled in the specific situation where it makes sense. The
    idea would be to teach the user why the action doesn't make sense
    with the tool-tip so that later on they do know before needing to
    try.

    Certainly, there won't be room in the menu for a message and I don't
    think removing the option is the right choice.

    Removing the option is like how XFig only displays buttons at the
    bottom of the window depending on the tool selected from the
    buttons on the left. That seems to work as well, but probably
    doesn't scale for programs that have lots of options, eg. 3D CAD,
    because the user needs to memorise the different button/menu
    layouts for every tool.

    The worst example of greyed-out options has to be where a
    configuration menu uses that as a way of representing some feature
    being disabled because corresponding additional hardware/software
    wasn't found/working. When corresponding hardware/software _is_
    installed, one usually wants a bit more information. Bonus points
    if, after a day of messing about with the system configuration, you
    discover that the feature isn't actually implemented in the program
    in the first place and the configuration option is just supposed to
    represent one of the developer's TODOs!

    --
    __ __
    #_ < |\| |< _#

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  • From Sylvia Else@21:1/5 to Sylvia Else on Thu Feb 3 10:19:37 2022
    On 23-Jan-22 7:58 pm, Sylvia Else wrote:
    The greyed out menu option.

    It's there. I want to select it, but it's disabled.

    Why?

    Presumably the program knows, but it doesn't let on. I'm meant to be
    able to guess what I have to do to enable it.

    In some software that I've developed, hovering over a greyed out menu
    option cause a tip to be displayed stating the reason it's greyed out.

    I wish that were standard practice. It would alleviate a major cause of baldness.

    Sylvia.

    Seems I had inadvertently pressed one of function keys at some point,
    which changed something making the desired option unavailable.


    That's another pet peeve - function keys and hot keys generally that
    change things in unobvious ways that the user won't know how to undo, or
    even realise has been done.

    To my mind, the default for such keys should be that they are disabled.
    Let the user choose to use hot keys if desired, but don't impose them by default.

    Sylvia.

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  • From Rich@21:1/5 to Sylvia Else on Thu Feb 3 02:08:33 2022
    Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> wrote:
    To my mind, the default for such keys should be that they are
    disabled. Let the user choose to use hot keys if desired, but don't
    impose them by default.

    In some environments, doing such would be illegal. I.e., software in
    the US that is subject to the ADA (American's with Disabilities Act) is required to have hotkeys enabled by default for those who are unable to
    utilize a mouse.

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