Cascading Option Menus

[Peter Haworth]

I guess on the theory that no news is good news then any news must be bad!  Back to the drawing board I guess.

I'm thinking I have a couple of choices.  

I could use an option menu showing what would have been the main menu items in the cascading scenario, and either a second option menu that displays what would have been the submenu items, with the second being populated when the user clicks on the first or use a modal dialog to get the secondary choice.

The other option is a popup menu.  I already have a popupmenu on the datagrid so it shouldn't be too hard to add some new items to it.  I stayed away from using it because currently, the popup menu items act on the data in the  datagrid row that the user clicks on whereas these new items would not.  I can separate the row specific items from the others with a line but how does that gel with HIG?


Pete Haworth

On Feb 2, 2011, at 11:03 AM, Richard Gaskin wrote:

> Peter Haworth wrote:
> 
>> The recent thread on mouseDoubleup and particularly Richard's thought
>> on HIG have made me realise the UI choices I made weren't the best.
>> I'm now thinking of using a cascading option menu.
>> 
>> The menuPick dictionary entry says "If the menu item is part of
>> a submenu, the menu item label is followed by a vertical bar (|)
>> and the submenu's label."
>> but what I'm seeing is just the actual submenu choice with tabs
>> at the front of it.
>> 
>> I don't think I can make this work since I could have the same
>> submenu item listed under more than one main menu item.  What
>> am I missing?
> 
> I hate to keep being the bearer of bad news, but submenus are only supported in LiveCode for pulldown and popup menu styles.
> 
> This is conformant with the OS X HIG (in Controls/Pop-Up Menus):
> 
>     Avoid adding a submenu to any item in a pop-up menu.
>     Doing so hides choices too deeply and is physically
>     difficult for users to use.
> 
> Since option controls are more commonly used for selections, putting the items into a pulldown menu with an appropriate label or a gear or some other relevant icon might be a good option to do what you need.
> 
> --
> Richard Gaskin
> Fourth World
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