menu buttons and showname

Bob Sneidar bobsneidar at iotecdigital.com
Thu Jul 2 17:38:36 EDT 2015


Because if you don’t set the label to empty, then the name of the control is displayed as the default choice. It looks like crap, and irritated me, so as a quick fix, I set mine to empty as well. There are times when there is no default choice, that any choice is as viable as the rest. 

Bob S


> On Jul 2, 2015, at 13:17 , Scott Rossi <scott at tactilemedia.com> wrote:
> 
> 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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