« Return to Thread: Hiding and Disabling Menu Items
Re: Hiding and Disabling Menu Items
by Rich Rogan
::
Rate this Message:
I would seriously suggest reconsidering this "Hide buttons" in this case and
"show buttons" in that case, VS Enable button in this case and disable
button in that case.
We did both of these designs and users were consistently confused when
choosing a specific entity and an option would suddenly "not be there"
(feedback - system has bugs, what changed/somethings broken), VS when we
disabled the button this reinforced that entity "x" didn't have this
functioanlity.
Rich
On 7/2/08, Dan Saffer <dan@...> wrote:
>
>
> On Jul 2, 2008, at 8:42 AM, Rich Rogan wrote:
>
> I'd have to agree with what I believe all this threads comments are
>> pointing
>> to (and add that this is what we're doing in our app, with great user
>> feedback), - it's better to disable a button when this functionality is
>> not
>> available then:
>>
>> 1. Hide it, or
>> 2. Leave it visually enabled but thru user intervention the user discovers
>> it is actually "disabled".
>>
>
> Actually, no. We've been saying we agree with Joel, that #1 is usually bad.
> The best practice we seem to be hovering around is:
>
> Leave the item visible, but visually distinguished as disabled. When
> possible, allow for some means to explain why it is disabled (tooltip, help
> icon).
>
> Dan
>
--
Joseph Rich Rogan
President UX/UI Inc.
http://www.jrrogan.com
________________________________________________________________
Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)!
To post to this list ....... discuss@...
Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe
List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines
List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
"show buttons" in that case, VS Enable button in this case and disable
button in that case.
We did both of these designs and users were consistently confused when
choosing a specific entity and an option would suddenly "not be there"
(feedback - system has bugs, what changed/somethings broken), VS when we
disabled the button this reinforced that entity "x" didn't have this
functioanlity.
Rich
On 7/2/08, Dan Saffer <dan@...> wrote:
>
>
> On Jul 2, 2008, at 8:42 AM, Rich Rogan wrote:
>
> I'd have to agree with what I believe all this threads comments are
>> pointing
>> to (and add that this is what we're doing in our app, with great user
>> feedback), - it's better to disable a button when this functionality is
>> not
>> available then:
>>
>> 1. Hide it, or
>> 2. Leave it visually enabled but thru user intervention the user discovers
>> it is actually "disabled".
>>
>
> Actually, no. We've been saying we agree with Joel, that #1 is usually bad.
> The best practice we seem to be hovering around is:
>
> Leave the item visible, but visually distinguished as disabled. When
> possible, allow for some means to explain why it is disabled (tooltip, help
> icon).
>
> Dan
>
--
Joseph Rich Rogan
President UX/UI Inc.
http://www.jrrogan.com
________________________________________________________________
Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)!
To post to this list ....... discuss@...
Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe
List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines
List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
« Return to Thread: Hiding and Disabling Menu Items
| Free embeddable forum powered by Nabble | Forum Help |
