[Sigia-l] Grayed Out Nav Elements vs. Changing Nav Menu

[Ripul]

Hello,

Dan rightly pointed out about people relying on their muscle memory to
navigate though menus, so "disappearing and magically reappearing" menus of
various heights are ruled out.

However, keeping the disabled menu items give two clear messages to the
users:
a. You cannot do this task now now.
b. You can do something to enable the menu item so that the task can be
done.

There are some solutions which have worked for us:
* Reorganization of menus so that complete menus grey out -- good for large
number of related (those that appear/disappear together) menu items.
* Reorganization of menu items so that related menus are grouped together
between two separators -- good for small number of related menu items or
sub-tasks.

And
* If the larger feature is enabled/diabled by the user thru user
preferences, you also should also make sure that the "Preferences" menu also
appear at the bottom of the same menu.
* If the users select some items in another menu so that the program
enables/disables these menu items, move the former with the latter.
These will help users to clearly see the feedback/reaction the place where
they performed the actions.

- Ripul

Ripul Kumar
Sr Usability Engineer
Pramati Technologies
http://www.pramati.com