Guidelines:Menus

From KDE-HIG_Wiki

Menus

Menu elements include words (and sometimes icons) to designate menu titles and items, and symbols to designate keyboard shortcuts, hierarchical menus, separators, and the state of some menu items.

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Designing Menus

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Guidelines

Menu Structure:

Group standard functions in consistency with the KDE standard menus (see Implementation Suggestions).
Group the remaining items according to conventional categories.
If that is not possible, group them according to self-explanatory logical or functional categories (e.g. Actions versus Objects).
Otherwise, group arbitrarily.

Sequence of Items:

Within a group, move important functions to the top of the menu.
If the sequence of usage is determined, arrange the items according to that sequence.
If the frequency of usage is known, and the number of items is about eight, move the most frequently used icons to the top the menu.
If none of the above rules is applicable, use an alphabetical order.

Amount of Items:

Avoid more than fifteen items in top-level menus. If a menu has more items than this, consider moving a functionally related subset of items into a submenu or a new top-level menu.
Avoid more than one level of submenus. If a submenu contains more than five items, consider giving it its own menu.
Do not design menus with less than three items. Either move the items to another menu, or move other items to this menu. In case of a submenu, move the items to their parent menu.

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Rationale

Creating an intuitive menu structure is crucial for the usability of an application. If users do not find the functions they are searching for due to an inadequate item arrangement, they are not able to fulfill their task. In general, deep menu hierarchies should be avoided as they are hard to memorize, and physically difficult to navigate.

If applied carefully, icons add to the learnability of an application by supporting the perceptibility of certain functions. To do so, icons have to be selective: If a number of icons does not show any significant differences, it is hard to keep them apart. As a result, learning is rather hindered than supported. The more icons you use, the higher is the danger that their significance declines. Therefore, firstly use icons for important functions which emerge at multiple locations within your application.

Often, it is not possible to decide which menu structure is best — especially in a complex application with many options. In that case, usability testing is of need. Contact usability@kde.org to get help on this.

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