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From: lippin@ronzoni.berkeley.edu (The Apathist)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Dialog Edit menu, display of shortcuts
Message-ID: <1990Mar9.004439.5462@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 9 Mar 90 00:44:39 GMT
References: <39127@apple.Apple.COM> <1831@esquire.UUCP> <10672@hoptoad.uucp> <7084@goofy.Apple.COM>
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Recently lsr@Apple.COM (Larry Rosenstein) wrote:

>Graying out the unavailable menus is a good idea in general.  (MacApp does 
>this automatically if none of the menu items are enabled.)  Then in modal 
>dialogs where you couldn't hack in the standard Edit menu, you could gray 
>out all the menus, and the concept would still be consistent.

The concept would still be consistent within your program, but there's
still the problem that most other programs would leave menus looking
active during modal dialogs, so experienced users won't try them.

Does MacApp gray out menus during modal dialogs?  Including standard
file and the print manager dialogs?

But maybe we can all get together on this, and gray out the menus
*all* the times they're not available.  Maybe even get MultiFinder to
gray out it's icon when you can't switch to another application.  Add
a little more consistency to the user interface.

A Human Interface Note might help get this rolling.

[As long as I'm griping, why aren't there outlines around the default
buttons in standard file?]

					--Tom Lippincott
					  lippin@math.berkeley.edu

 "I enjoy working with humans, and have stimulating relationships with them."
					--HAL