[Sigia-l] What we do, How we do it, etc.

[James Aylett]

Eric Reiss wrote:

> Although it's always nice if a label can improve the scent in some
> way, a set of top-tier labels indicates the scope of a site, not
> necessarily the specific content. Using your argumentation, one could
> perhaps conclude that menus in restaurants are ineffective when they
> list appetizers, main courses, desserts, etc. And what about various
> office applications? Are File and Edit and Help such bad generic
> labels - and these are certainly used across a wide range of products?

I've always felt that File, Edit and friends are misleading more often
than not. I often can't remember where a particular option is going to
be in something that isn't an editing application (where they often do
make sense) - and we are increasingly consumers more than creators. In a
web browser, for instance, Edit has almost nothing to do with editing.
Some things fit dubiously in all categories (preferences will be on one
of the File, Edit, Window and Tools menus in most applications - in
some, on more than one!).

However in general having these common groupings seems to be good
enough, and seems to be better than coming up with your own groupings -
but some application designers, in some cases, manage to come up with a
completely different approach that works even better.

(There may be a point there. Not sure I can find it on a Friday though
:-)

James

-- 
James Aylett
 Chief Technical Architect
 phone 020 7535 9850
 skype james.aylett

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