[josm-dev] JOSM main menu - behaviour inconsistencies

[Ulf Lamping]

Hi List!

I've took a look at how the JOSM main menu behaves in terms of usability.

Some improvements that immediately came to my mind:

Files -> File (rename to use the common menu name)
View/Zoom to/Zoom to xy -> View/Zoom to xy (remove an indirection here, 
the View menu is currently not very crowded)
Tools - sort the menu entries by usage frequency (e.g. move the more 
often used "Split/Combine Way" up to the top?)


When no data layer is loaded, the "various" top level menu items behave 
differently, which is bad IMHO. Current behaviour in terms of activity:

a) hide the top level menu item completely (as the View menu does)
b) no affect at all (as the Tools menu does)
c) grey out the top level menu item (as the WMS Plugin does)

The current mix of behaviour is a pretty bad thing in terms of 
usability, which I would like to fix.

The GNOME HIG (at 
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/menus.html) suggests: 
"Do not disable menu titles. Allow the user to explore the menu, even 
though there might be no available items on it at that time."

So I personally prefer "grey out only the menu items, but not the top 
level menu title" and would be willing to do the changes accordingly ...

Regards, ULFL

P.S: Please DO NOT hijack this track "I would like to have ..." - I know 
there are more things to do (especially with the Plugins), but I have to 
start somewhere and discussing all at once lead us to nowhere ...