menu buttons and showname

[Scott Rossi]

As far as there being a "correct type of control", that's open to endless
debate. :-)

>From what you describe, there doesn't seem to be a need for a call to
action -- this was suggested simply to address the case that a selection
MUST be made for things to work.  Since this doesn't seem to be relevant
in your situation, I would imagine you'd display a default option as the
control label.

The bigger issue is why you have an empty option at all.  If that's a
setting that a user can implement, the option should read something like
"<no selection>" or "<empty>" or similar.  If the empty value is something
pulled from a table that can't be acted upon, there's no need to include
it in the list of options.

As always, I may be missing something. :-)

Regards,

Scott Rossi
Creative Director
Tactile Media, UX/UI Design




On 7/2/15, 12:59 PM, "Peter Haworth" <pete at lcsql.com> wrote:

>Interesting observation Scott.  Makes me wonder if I'm actually using the
>correct type of menu.
>
>For example, I might have an option menu which lists the names of tables
>in
>a database and another one that lists the columns in the selected table.
>There's no "call to action" in that situation (other than to pick a table
>and a column), so is an option menu the correct type of control according
>to HIG?
>
>On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 10:00 AM Scott Rossi <scott at tactilemedia.com>
>wrote:
>
>> Often, this type of control has a call to action such as "Choose an
>>item",
>> as opposed an indication "No selection".  It depends on the context of
>> your control.  If a selection is required in your set up, the call to
>> action is more communicative. Otherwise, if "No selection" is a valid
>> selection then that type of message should work.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Scott Rossi
>> Creative Director
>> Tactile Media, UX/UI Design
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 7/2/15, 8:47 AM, "Peter Haworth" <pete at lcsql.com> wrote:
>>
>> >Good point. For lots of reasons, the names of my option menus aren't
>> >suitable for display to a user. Maybe the cleanest thing to do then
>>is, if
>> >the text of the menu is empty, set its label as suggested by Richard. I
>> >like that. Most of the menus in question are under the control of a
>> >behavior so this is easy to implement.
>> >
>> >On Thu, Jul 2, 2015, 8:28 AM Richard Gaskin
>><ambassador at fourthworld.com>
>> >wrote:
>> >
>> >> Peter Haworth wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > So my technique of setting showname to false if the text is empty
>>is
>> >>the
>> >> > only way round this?
>> >> >
>> >> > Also, you can have a label for an option menu with empty text. Try
>> >> setting
>> >> > the text of an option menu to empty, then use the message box to
>>set
>> >>its
>> >> > label to some value.
>> >>
>> >> With the OS X HIGs not nearly as complete as they used to be I can no
>> >> longer find the relevant section on this, but I believe most HIGs
>> >> suggest that we avoid giving the user the impression the control may
>>be
>> >> broken by replacing empty items with some explanation of why it's
>>empty,
>> >> or perhaps a disabled item simply saying "None".
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >>   Richard Gaskin
>> >>   Fourth World Systems
>> >>   Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the
>>Web
>> >>   
>>____________________________________________________________________
>> >>   Ambassador at FourthWorld.com
>>http://www.FourthWorld.com
>> >>
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