anders@verity.com (Anders Wallgren) (01/18/91)
In article <6738@wolfen.cc.uow.oz>, stephen@wolfen (Stephen J Nicholson) writes: >How do people feel about placing action commands into a palette of buttons >on the window that they pertain to rather than having them in a menu? > >Do people feel that whatever is in the button palette should be duplicated >in the menu, or can we have buttons that do not appear in the menu. > >What is the general feeling about this? > My experience (both personally and by way of user-testing) says that most Macintosh users, expecially those who are inexperienced with palettes or with computers in general, go right for the menus when they are confused or trying to figure out how to get something done. They are pretty uncomfortable clicking on anything that has just pictures on them. Buttons seem to be a little more palatable, but are often not practical because of real-estate and aesthetic reasons. That said, action-palettes can be a good thing once a user learns what tool corresponds to what action - but making them required can be a real pain on small screens. anders