Bad Idea To Disable an 'Edit' Menu

[Ken Ray]

On 8/20/05 12:04 PM, "Richard Gaskin" <ambassador at fourthworld.com> wrote:

>> Well, regardless of whether there are other apps that disable an entire menu
>> (thanks, Richard, for the HIG post, btw), the fact is that Rev allows you to
>> do it, and the results are inconsistent under OS X for the Edit menu (and
>> probably the Help menu too, I'd suspect). So either Rev shouldn't allow the
>> disabling of an entire menu, or it should at least be consistent, IMHO.
> 
> But if you disable the entire menu, what happens to your Preferences
> item on Win?

It disables along with the rest of the menu

> Although the Win HIG says that when all of a menu's items are
> unavailable to go ahead and disable the entire menu, in the case of the
> Edit menu that's not likely to be an issue, since it's the common place
> for the Preferences item.

Well, actually it's not as common to do that in Windows apps as in Mac -
they usually don't have "Preferences" under the Edit menu; they have
"Options" under the Tools menu, or if it does have "Preferences", it's not
under the Edit menu (I've seen it under Configure, or File, etc.).

Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software
Web site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/
Email: kray at sonsothunder.com