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[gpvillamil]

Some thoughts on menu layout that may help improve usability and reduce confusion...

I pointed out already that the "View" menu has a submenu called "List Style", which in turn has another submenu called "List Style" - a little bit awkward.

One possible fix is this: move "Navigation" out of the "View" menu, and make it a menu itself, called "Favorites", sitting right after "View". This would make the MC10 menu bar consistent with Explorer and many browsers:

File, Edit, View, Favorites, Player, Tools, Help

(I have currently achieved this by adding "Favorites" as a toolbar button to the top, with a text label. If I could get rid of the icon, it would look exactly like the other menus. Usability is great - it is exactly where users expect it, because it looks like the layout on a web browser.)

The View menu will now be a lot shorter, and everything there will be related to views, not navigation. Then, instead of having the first "List Style" submenu, just move everything in the "List Style" submenu straight to the "View Menu" - no more having two submenus with the same name.

Finally, move "Create View Scheme" from the "Edit" menu to the "View" menu. It is the only view-related item that is not under the "View menu" right now.

You might want to add "Quick Play" to the Player menu as well. Display Options, currently under the "Player" menu, might be better off under "View" as well, after all Full Screen and Theater View are already there. Only Windowed view would need to be added.

This will lead to a very clean organization of functions, with everything related to editing under "Edits", to views under "View", navigation under "Favorites" and playback under "Player".

The "Tools" menu is a little bit confused, because it contains the library editing functions, and the other key library commands are under "File". I'd almost think it worthwhile adding a "Library" menu but perhaps that is going too far.

It would be cool if the if the top part of the "Tools" menu was exactly consistent with the Action Window - currently it is about 75% there. Acquire Images, Rip, Burn, Image are all in the AW and the "Tools" menu - however Handheld does not appear in any menu, and many of the functions of File Properties are in the "Edit" menu. Import Media would be a good addition to the AW, as it is a time-consuming task that could happily run in a separate AW panel.

[I've been working on a very large, metadata-driven website recently, so have become a bit obsessive regarding the value of 100% consistent data structures & lists...]

[Matt]

It's tricky.

Some tools act on files by editing their properties.

[gpvillamil]

Yep. It's tricky indeed.

So you have to work to a solution that makes it easy to find commands, regardless of how they work. One solution is to make the commands available in multiple places, which MC does.

Another is to make things consistent - if a list of options/commands turns up in one place, the same list should appear when some members of it turn up elsewhere. That is why consistency between the AW and the tools menu would be good, and consistency between the View menu and the Player/Display Options menu would also be good.

There is always a problem when you have commands that do something regardless of a selection, and others that act on a selection. Compare the functions of Quick Play and Send To, for example. (I use both of them, and I like them, but think of how you would explain their function to a naive user...)

Anyway, any other comments on my post other than it being a tricky problem?

[JimH]

Your suggestions have merit.  We'll take a look at the menus after everything else is done.  Thanks for taking time to think about this and write it up.