I was surprised at this comment by Joel also. The best solution, as
far as I'm concerned, is to have items be disabled -- don't expect
users to select things just to be told why they don't work -- but
offer a tool tip showing why the item is disabled if you hover over it
or select it. The code already knows why the thing's disabled.
I was also surprised at a comment by John Gruber ("Daring Fireball")
on this:
Spolsky’s suggestion is also predicated on the assumption that the
user is stupid. Better is to assume that the user is clever and
curious and will be able to figure out for themself why a certain
command is currently disabled.
Yeah, that's it. If people don't know why some command is disabled,
they must be stupid. Clever and curious users will be EAGER to explore
for several minutes trying to figure out why the command is disabled.
It's like a game - who wouldn't want to play?
On Jul 1, 2008, at 5:02 PM, Dan Saffer wrote:
Joel ("On Software") says,
"A long time ago, it became fashionable, even recommended, to
disable menu items when they could not be used.
Don't do this. Users see the disabled menu item that they want to
click on, and are left entirely without a clue of what they are
supposed to do to get the menu item to work.
Instead, leave the menu item enabled. If there's some reason you
can't complete the action, the menu item can display a message
telling the user why."
<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/07/01.html>
I agree about the hiding, but I don't think I necessarily agree
about the disabling. What is missing from his critique is how "the
menu item can display a message telling the user why." Does he mean
pop-ups? Tool tips?
I'd rather set the users' expectations correctly than to have them
click on a menu item and have a pop up appear telling them why they
can't do that. A really long tooltip: "If you want to Paste an
object, first you need to unlock this layer." is definitely better,
but could have tons of conditionals.
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