Rules to build user friendly menus

Introduction

The purpose of this page is to describe 10 basic principles to build easy to use Menus for a rich mind map software called Freeplane !

You can refer to Menus : work in progress to follow and collaborate in the design of the new FreePlane menus structure.

Legend

In this page :

• MM means Main Menu. Main menu is the main bar of menus which gives access to all software features
• CO means Command. A command is available in menu, it executes an action
• SM means Sub Menu. A submenu is a menu entry which opens an other menu
• CM means Contextual Menu. A contextual menu is a menu displayed only in a specific context (ie while on a node or on the map background)
• XX# means rules number # for subject XX.

Rules to organize Main Menu

• (MM1) a MM entry is created for each kind of operation (File / Edit / Display ...)
• (MM2) MM should be in a logical order inspired by other softwares best practices

Rules to organize Commands in menus

• (CO1) in a MM entry, items are grouped by type of operations (all commands to move nodes are at the same place)
• (CO2) items are ordered logicaly (items used first at the beginning : ie Create Node > Edit Node > Delete Node or Print Preview then Print; if no logical order can be found : the must used commands are in first position)

Use of Sub Menus

• (SM1) SM are created to simplify long MM or CM (ie more than 20 items in the menu)
• (SM2) SM should be limited to 3 levels (ie 3 clicks before displaying the wanted command)
• (SB3) SM should contain 3 items or more

Contextual Menu

• (CM1) in CM, order should be the same as in MM (consistency for end-users)
• (CM2) CM should contain only very frequently used commands

Toolbars

• (TB1) the rules for toolbars are the same as for CM : same order as MM, only frequently used commands.