Having fits with the menu bar

[Peter Haworth]

I almost replied on this topic a couple of days ago when there was another user confused by this.

I do agree that the way Livecode arranges menus for the Mac is standard behavior for OSX according to Apple's Human Interface Guidelines.  My problem with what Livecode does is that "standard" and "guidelines" mean just that, by which I mean that Livecode should provide a way to do non-standard things that don't conform to the guidelines if that's what I want to do.  It's fine to use the guidelines as a default but there should be a way to not take the default and I don't think LiveCode provides one.

Yes, that will confuse Mac users and probably cause some disdain but it should be up to me to make that decision as to whether I'm prepared to deal with that, not Livecode.  Maybe I'm writing a small app for my own use on my own Mac and I want the menus to behave as I want them to, not how Apple says they should; I should have that ability.

No doubt the HIG police will jump all over me for this but it's not really about HIG, it's about Livecode providing ways for developers to do things the way they want to do things, not how LiveCode wants to.

Discuss.  

Pete Haworth









On Mar 12, 2011, at 11:43 AM, J. Landman Gay wrote:

> No, and you shouldn't, because they are in the places they are supposed to be for OS X. Moving them will confuse your Mac users, your app will be non-standard and (knowing most Mac people) distained for flying in the face of the HIG. The beauty of LiveCode is that it manages all this menu placement for you. Your items will be where you put them on Windows and Linux, which have different menu expectations, and transparently moved to the required locations on OS X.