Aphrodite menu spec, now in HTML format

[Matthew Thomas]

Thanks to amazing work by Fantasai Rainnes, the Aphrodite menu spec is
now on the Aphrodite site in HTML and CSS format
<http://critique.net.nz/project/mozilla/general/interface/menus/>.

It's still very sketchy -- I need to do a fair bit of style sheet
trickery on each page, expand on Fantasai's explanatory notes for each
item, and do lots more index pages and inter-page links ... but even as
it is, it's a lot more browsable than the plain-text version
<http://critique.net.nz/project/mozilla/general/interface/menus/menus.txt>.

I'd also like to thank Fantasai for making dozens of useful suggestions
for the spec, and catching lots of silly inconsistencies and errors I'd
made with mnemonics and stuff.

--
Matthew `mpt' Thomas, Mozilla user interface QA
<http://critique.net.nz/project/mozilla/>

[Klein Duijmpje]

Congratulations Matthew :-) Good going.

BTW in the 'Theme Switcher Location' thread there has been a bit of
discussion on the placing of the 'Preference' option.
If you are inclined perhaps you can explain to me why Aphrodite has it
under 'View' and ot under 'Edit'?

KD

[fantasai]

> If you are inclined perhaps you can explain to me why
> Aphrodite has it under 'View' and ot under 'Edit'?

All the items under the 'Edit' menu are editing tools. Not a single one has
anything to do with a "preference". The 'View' menu, on the other hand, is mostly
viewing preferences: whether the view should be with this style sheet or that,
whether URIs should be linked to, whether the directory will be displayed in
alphabetical or chronological order, etc. So the 'preferences' option fits better
under the 'View' menu than 'Edit', certainly. The only problem I see with placing
'preferences' under 'View' is that the preferences have a broader scope than
specifying just the display.

Take a closer look at the headings and subheadings in the HTMLized menu spec.
Although I can't say everything fits in perfectly, they might help explain why
certain things are placed where they are.

[Klein Duijmpje]

Thanks for the enlightenment :-)

KD

[Matthew Thomas]

fantasai wrote:
>
> > If you are inclined perhaps you can explain to me why
> > Aphrodite has it under 'View' and ot under 'Edit'?
>
> All the items under the 'Edit' menu are editing tools. Not a single
> one has anything to do with a "preference". The 'View' menu, on the
> other hand, is mostly viewing preferences: whether the view should be
> with this style sheet or that, whether URIs should be linked to,
> whether the directory will be displayed in alphabetical or
> chronological order, etc. So the 'preferences' option fits better
> under the 'View' menu than 'Edit', certainly. The only problem I see
> with placing 'preferences' under 'View' is that the preferences have a
> broader scope than specifying just the display.

Another reason is that `View' is where all the other accessory windows
are -- Cookie Jar, History, Script Console, etc. It would probably be a
good idea for the prefs dialog to become completely non-modal
eventually, like those other windows are. (I think there's a prefs.js
test pref for that right now, actually.)

I'd like to put the menu items for all these windows (including
Preferences) in a `Tools' menu, but I've suggested that here twice
already and there has been zero response, so I assume nobody thinks it
would be a good idea.

> Take a closer look at the headings and subheadings in the HTMLized
> menu spec. Although I can't say everything fits in perfectly, they
> might help explain why certain things are placed where they are.

And I haven't even read most of those headings yet, so they're not
guaranteed to agree with what I think. :-) Eventually I'll have a little
Q&A section after each menu item, dicussing where else the menu item
could go and why it's where it is.

[Klein Duijmpje]

Matthew Thomas wrote:
>
> fantasai wrote:
> >
> > > If you are inclined perhaps you can explain to me why
> > > Aphrodite has it under 'View' and ot under 'Edit'?
> >
> > All the items under the 'Edit' menu are editing tools. Not a single
> > one has anything to do with a "preference". The 'View' menu, on the
> > other hand, is mostly viewing preferences: whether the view should be
> > with this style sheet or that, whether URIs should be linked to,
> > whether the directory will be displayed in alphabetical or
> > chronological order, etc. So the 'preferences' option fits better
> > under the 'View' menu than 'Edit', certainly. The only problem I see
> > with placing 'preferences' under 'View' is that the preferences have a
> > broader scope than specifying just the display.
>
> Another reason is that `View' is where all the other accessory windows
> are -- Cookie Jar, History, Script Console, etc. It would probably be a
> good idea for the prefs dialog to become completely non-modal
> eventually, like those other windows are. (I think there's a prefs.js
> test pref for that right now, actually.)
>
> I'd like to put the menu items for all these windows (including
> Preferences) in a `Tools' menu, but I've suggested that here twice
> already and there has been zero response, so I assume nobody thinks it
> would be a good idea.

Well (needless to say) I agree with you on that Matthew.... Hence why I
have it under 'Tasks' in AMI.