New article on OS4coding: "Common GUI Design Problems"

@trixie

Very good article.

I disagree with About menu and an ellipsis. Even if the About window is displayed immediately it requires you to press Ok to get rid of it. If you choose Save then it saves the file to a disk immediately and you don't have to press any buttons. So it's a thin line in water.

@thread

Let's call AHI as Audio Devices. Move alerts settings from Sound to Notifications prefs.

@TSK

In the case of About, the requester is the thing you've asked for. The ellipsis should be used if the option shows a window as an intermediary step, not if showing the window is the action.

There was further debate as to whether simple confirmation requesters count as an intermediary step. I think it's helpful/reassuring to have the ellipsis in that case, but the point was made that these can be switched off sometimes in options, and it is confusing to have the menus change (another example would be a delete option which only pops up for confirmation if two or more items are selected).

@TSK

Quote:
I'm afraid you're missing the point here.

The logic - and I repeat, not invented by me - is that if a menu command starts an action immediately, it needs no ellipsis. This is exactly the case with "About": it does start immediately - the action amounts to displaying the information in the requester. No step in between, no input, no confirmation whether you want to perform the action (= display the About info) - so no ellipsis. The fact that you click "OK" to end the requester is irrelevant: all requesters must be closed by clicking on a gadget, don't they?

A different story is, for example, the "Format" command: here the action (= formatting the disk) does not start immediately, it needs to be confirmed first by the user. Hence the ellipsis in the menu item.

@Chris

Yeah, I know it's a little tricky thing, and inconsistencies on other platforms confirm it. All I'm saying is: don't forget the ellipsis where it is needed/helpful/reassuring but don't litter menus where the program does not call for it.

The usage of Elipsis seems fairly logical and I can see how it came about and can understand how it could be misused so easily.
I will try and make sure I use them correctly in all my creations. I also need to take a step back and look at what I have already produced and see if I have used it all and whether it has been applied correctly