On 4 July 2011 15:01, Shaun McCance <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, 2011-07-04 at 14:20 +0100, Matthew East wrote: >> On 28 June 2011 09:17, Joshua Wulf <[email protected]> wrote: >> > Ah, I see that the user name goes away. >> > >> > Is it possible to have: >> > >> > "Click the User Menu ..." >> > >> > and have "User Menu" hyperlinked to a definition? >> > >> > That would provide a single disambiguation point that could easily be >> > updated when things like this change, and allow users who know what it >> > is to read streamlined instructions, and users who don't know what it is >> > to find the definition at a single click. >> >> This is my preferred approach too. Even better than a hyperlink would >> be a mouseover definition. >> > > What benefit do we get from making up a name for the menu?
I would expect that the menu would already have a name, which would be used when describing the interface generally, not just in documentation, but also in marketing materials, design documents and so on. I think that it is fairly natural for us to use names, because that is how human beings tend to interact with each other. It makes things easier to refer to. That's why I have a name, instead of being described as "the chubby guy with brown hair and a bald patch over there". Yes, people have to learn my name when they first meet me, but each time they meet me after that is a lot easier. In the same way, using a description of what the menu looks like can be more cumbersome, inelegant, and unreliable (because it could move, or change appearance) than just using a name. The phrase "user menu" certainly appears here: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design/. I don't know too much about Gnome Shell but I had assumed that the menus would have names. I know that Unity does: http://askubuntu.com/questions/10228/whats-the-right-terminology-for-unitys-ui-elements/19166#19166 -- Matthew East http://www.mdke.org gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF _______________________________________________ gnome-doc-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-doc-list
