The greyed out menu option.

It's there. I want to select it, but it's disabled.

Why?

Presumably the program knows, but it doesn't let on. I'm meant to be
able to guess what I have to do to enable it.

In some software that I've developed, hovering over a greyed out menu
option cause a tip to be displayed stating the reason it's greyed out.

I wish that were standard practice. It would alleviate a major cause of
baldness.

Sylvia.

Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> writes:

> The greyed out menu option.
>
> It's there. I want to select it, but it's disabled.
>
> Why?
>
> Presumably the program knows, but it doesn't let on. I'm meant to be
> able to guess what I have to do to enable it.
>
> In some software that I've developed, hovering over a greyed out menu
> option cause a tip to be displayed stating the reason it's greyed out.
>
> I wish that were standard practice. It would alleviate a major cause
> of baldness.

You wish that most people would actually have a passion for what they do
for a living. But the world is depressed in every sense of the word.

On 2 Feb 2022, Meredith Montgomery wrote
(in article <86k0ed9zxy.fsf@levado.to>):

> Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> writes:
>
> > The greyed out menu option.
> >
> > It's there. I want to select it, but it's disabled.
> >
> > Why?
> >
> > Presumably the program knows, but it doesn't let on. I'm meant to be
> > able to guess what I have to do to enable it.
> >
> > In some software that I've developed, hovering over a greyed out menu
> > option cause a tip to be displayed stating the reason it's greyed out.
> >
> > I wish that were standard practice. It would alleviate a major cause
> > of baldness.
>
> You wish that most people would actually have a passion for what they do
> for a living. But the world is depressed in every sense of the word.

Far, far back in the mists of time there were the Apple Human Interface
Guidelines, a superb manual of UI design which was current around System 6
era (err....88-90?), and for which I then got the System 7 supplement.

System 7 introduced the idea of “balloon help”, now known universally as
tooltips. Every GUI element was meant to have balloon help associated with
it, and if you turned on Balloon Help on the menu then hovering your mouse
cursor near an element, including menu options, would pop up a balloon
describing what it did and why.

I spent quite a lot of effort making sure my stuff had all of this working
and working well. Other people...hmm...rather less so. So yes, I feel the
pain here particularly since efforts have been made for a long long time to
provide easy ways for developers to sort this.

Cheers,
Ian

Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> writes:

> The greyed out menu option.
>
> It's there. I want to select it, but it's disabled.
>
> Why?
>
> Presumably the program knows, but it doesn't let on. I'm meant to be
> able to guess what I have to do to enable it.

I remember there used to be a list of awful GUI design elements and this
was there, near the top? GUI hall of shame? Can't find it now.

I have to say this doesn't come up that often in my computer usage. In
fact, I can't come up with any specific app where this happens. Am I so
jaded I don't even notice or could it be this isn't that common?

Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> writes:

> The greyed out menu option.
>
> It's there. I want to select it, but it's disabled.
>
> Why?
>
> Presumably the program knows, but it doesn't let on. I'm meant to be
> able to guess what I have to do to enable it.
>
> In some software that I've developed, hovering over a greyed out menu
> option cause a tip to be displayed stating the reason it's greyed out.
>
> I wish that were standard practice. It would alleviate a major cause
> of baldness.

So, in your world there is no reason for a grayed out menu.

I use Fvwm. Fvwm grays out menu entries when MWM hints say the
operation is not allowed.

Explain why that is not the best option.

--
Dan Espen

On 2022-02-02, Ian McCall <ian@eruvia.org> wrote:
> (snip)
> System 7 introduced the idea of ?balloon help?, now known universally as
> tooltips. Every GUI element was meant to have balloon help associated with
> it, and if you turned on Balloon Help on the menu then hovering your mouse
> cursor near an element, including menu options, would pop up a balloon
> describing what it did and why.
>
> I spent quite a lot of effort making sure my stuff had all of this working
> and working well. Other people...hmm...rather less so. So yes, I feel the
> pain here particularly since efforts have been made for a long long time to
> provide easy ways for developers to sort this.
>
> Cheers,
> Ian

I never programmed much on the classic Macintosh, but I was a Mac
user back then and I remember hearing that balloon help was rather
difficult to implement. Like, that it was in some way onerous to
actually get to work.

Was that true?

Best regards,
Charles

On Wed, 02 Feb 2022 10:37:06 -0500
Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:
> Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> writes:
>
> > The greyed out menu option.
> >
> > It's there. I want to select it, but it's disabled.
> >
> > Why?
> >
> > Presumably the program knows, but it doesn't let on. I'm meant to be
> > able to guess what I have to do to enable it.
> >
> > In some software that I've developed, hovering over a greyed out menu
> > option cause a tip to be displayed stating the reason it's greyed out.
> >
> > I wish that were standard practice. It would alleviate a major cause
> > of baldness.
>
> So, in your world there is no reason for a grayed out menu.

I don't think that follows from Sylvia's post. I think her complaint is
that no reason is displayed as to why the menu is greyed out.

> I use Fvwm. Fvwm grays out menu entries when MWM hints say the
> operation is not allowed.
>
> Explain why that is not the best option.

Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> writes:

> On Wed, 02 Feb 2022 10:37:06 -0500
> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> writes:
>>
>> > The greyed out menu option.
>> >
>> > It's there. I want to select it, but it's disabled.
>> >
>> > Why?
>> >
>> > Presumably the program knows, but it doesn't let on. I'm meant to be
>> > able to guess what I have to do to enable it.
>> >
>> > In some software that I've developed, hovering over a greyed out menu
>> > option cause a tip to be displayed stating the reason it's greyed out.
>> >
>> > I wish that were standard practice. It would alleviate a major cause
>> > of baldness.
>>
>> So, in your world there is no reason for a grayed out menu.
>
> I don't think that follows from Sylvia's post. I think her complaint is
> that no reason is displayed as to why the menu is greyed out.

I see, I think you are right.
I'm not quite sure of the best method a program could use to explain a
menu entry being gray though.

Maybe a tool tip that pops up while the entry is selected? Still I'd
want the menu to indicate the choice is no good before someone tries to
use the entry.

Certainly, there won't be room in the menu for a message and I don't think removing
the option is the right choice.

--
Dan Espen

On 2 Feb 2022, C Mercadal wrote
(in article <ste9b1$niu$1@dont-email.me>):

> On 2022-02-02, Ian McCall<ian@eruvia.org> wrote:
> > (snip)
> > System 7 introduced the idea of ?balloon help?, now known universally as
> > tooltips. Every GUI element was meant to have balloon help associated with
> > it, and if you turned on Balloon Help on the menu then hovering your mouse
> > cursor near an element, including menu options, would pop up a balloon
> > describing what it did and why.
> >
> > I spent quite a lot of effort making sure my stuff had all of this working
> > and working well. Other people...hmm...rather less so. So yes, I feel the
> > pain here particularly since efforts have been made for a long long time to
> > provide easy ways for developers to sort this.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Ian
>
> I never programmed much on the classic Macintosh, but I was a Mac
> user back then and I remember hearing that balloon help was rather
> difficult to implement. Like, that it was in some way onerous to
> actually get to work.
>
> Was that true?

‘Ish. It was easy enough if you only cared about System 7. The difficulty
was making the API calls correct for System 6 as well (I seem to remember
Gestalt Manager for checking if features existed, though that might have been
a later thing).

The main thing though was faffing in ResEdit. ResEdit was a double-edged
sword, some people -loved- graphical editing of their resources and code,
others were more “bah humbug” and wanted to programmatically create. Most
of the API calls assumed you were using ResEdit and it was a pain to
construct them purely programmatically.

I switched between the two groups depending what I was doing/mood I was in at
the time. Sometimes loved it, sometimes hated it.

Cheers,
Ian

Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:
> Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> On Wed, 02 Feb 2022 10:37:06 -0500
>> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> writes:
>>> >
>>> > In some software that I've developed, hovering over a greyed out menu
>>> > option cause a tip to be displayed stating the reason it's greyed out.
>>> >
>>> > I wish that were standard practice. It would alleviate a major cause
>>> > of baldness.
>>>
>>> So, in your world there is no reason for a grayed out menu.
>>
>> I don't think that follows from Sylvia's post. I think her complaint is
>> that no reason is displayed as to why the menu is greyed out.
>
> I see, I think you are right.
> I'm not quite sure of the best method a program could use to explain a
> menu entry being gray though.
>
> Maybe a tool tip that pops up while the entry is selected? Still I'd
> want the menu to indicate the choice is no good before someone tries to
> use the entry.

I usually encounter these sorts of things in graphical editor
software (image editing, 3D modelling, etc.), where the function is
only enabled in the specific situation where it makes sense. The
idea would be to teach the user why the action doesn't make sense
with the tool-tip so that later on they do know before needing to
try.

> Certainly, there won't be room in the menu for a message and I don't
> think removing the option is the right choice.

Removing the option is like how XFig only displays buttons at the
bottom of the window depending on the tool selected from the
buttons on the left. That seems to work as well, but probably
doesn't scale for programs that have lots of options, eg. 3D CAD,
because the user needs to memorise the different button/menu
layouts for every tool.

The worst example of greyed-out options has to be where a
configuration menu uses that as a way of representing some feature
being disabled because corresponding additional hardware/software
wasn't found/working. When corresponding hardware/software _is_
installed, one usually wants a bit more information. Bonus points
if, after a day of messing about with the system configuration, you
discover that the feature isn't actually implemented in the program
in the first place and the configuration option is just supposed to
represent one of the developer's TODOs!

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

On 23-Jan-22 7:58 pm, Sylvia Else wrote:
> The greyed out menu option.
>
> It's there. I want to select it, but it's disabled.
>
> Why?
>
> Presumably the program knows, but it doesn't let on. I'm meant to be
> able to guess what I have to do to enable it.
>
> In some software that I've developed, hovering over a greyed out menu
> option cause a tip to be displayed stating the reason it's greyed out.
>
> I wish that were standard practice. It would alleviate a major cause of
> baldness.
>
> Sylvia.

Seems I had inadvertently pressed one of function keys at some point,
which changed something making the desired option unavailable.

That's another pet peeve - function keys and hot keys generally that
change things in unobvious ways that the user won't know how to undo, or
even realise has been done.

To my mind, the default for such keys should be that they are disabled.
Let the user choose to use hot keys if desired, but don't impose them by
default.

Sylvia.

Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> wrote:
> To my mind, the default for such keys should be that they are
> disabled. Let the user choose to use hot keys if desired, but don't
> impose them by default.

In some environments, doing such would be illegal. I.e., software in
the US that is subject to the ADA (American's with Disabilities Act) is
required to have hotkeys enabled by default for those who are unable to
utilize a mouse.