Optional Menus

The following menus are commonly used, but considered optional in most style guides. An application of moderate complexity is likely to make use of at least some of these menus.

The View menu

The View menu should contain all options that influence the way the user looks at the program's data. Additionally, any optional visual items like rulers, templates, or palettes should be controlled here.

The Insert menu

The Insert menu is really an extension of the Edit menu. If you only have one or two Insert items, consider putting them on the Edit menu instead and omitting the Insert menu entirely.

The Settings menu

If you have a Settings menu in your application, you are making a commitment to the user that anytime he wants to alter a setting in the program he will find the way to do it here. Don't offer up a settings menu and then scatter other setting items or dialogs on other menus. This includes printer settings, which are often erroneously found on the File menu.

The Format menu

The Format menu is one of the weakest of the optional menus because it deals almost exclusively with properties of visual objects and not functions. In a more object-oriented world, properties of visual objects are controlled by more visual direct-manipulation idioms, not by functions. The menu serves its pedagogic purpose, but you might consider omitting it entirely if you've implemented a more object-oriented format property scheme.

The page setup commands that typically reside on the File menu should be placed here. (Notice that page setup is very different from printer setup.)

The Tools menu

The Tools menu, sometimes less-clearly called the Options menu, is where big, powerful functions go. Functions like spell-checkers and goal-finders are considered tools. Also, the Tool menu is where the hard-hat items should go.

Hard-hat items are the functions that should only be used by real power users. These include various advanced settings. For example, a client/server database program has easy-to-use, direct-manipulation idioms for building a query, while behind the scenes the program is composing the appropriate SQL statement to create the report. Giving power users a way to edit the SQL statement directly is most definitely a hard-hat function! Functions like these can be dangerous or dislocating, so they must be visually set off from the more benign tools available. In the past, the authors have segregated them from the other menu items and highlighted them with icons to indicate that they are for experts only. Another possible approach is to place them in an Expert menu, to the right of the more benign Tools menu.