programming-for-dummies

304
Designing a User Interface
Hide unusable options
At any given time, the users should know what they can do. Unfortunately,
poor user interfaces either
✦ Expect the user to know what to do next.
✦ Bombard the user with so much information that the user still doesn’t
know what to do next.
The command-line prompt is an example of a poor user interface that
expects that the user already knows all valid commands and how to spell
them. If you don’t know which commands may be valid, the user interface
won’t help you.
Even worse than sparse user interfaces are user interfaces that show too
much information, such as the pull-down menus in Figure 10-18. The program
in this figure displays an Attribute submenu within the Text menu title.
Figure 10-18:
This
program’s
pull-down
menu lets
you view a
bunch of
submenus
that you
can’t
access.
However, every option on the Attribute submenu appears dimmed, which
makes the Attribute submenu useless. Why bother showing the users commands
that they can’t use? Not only does this frustrate the user, but the user
never knows when any of the Attribute commands might appear undimmed
and available for use.