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.

(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

(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" then "Edit Node" then "Delete Node" or "Print Preview" then "Print". If no logical order can be found other rules can apply:
- the most often used commands can be set in first position
- order can also be set from particular to generic (ie: "Fold selected node" then "Fold all nodes of map")

(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

Rules applied to build contextual menu :

(CM1) in CM, order should be the same as in MM (consistency for end-users). For instance Node Contextual menu is yet a copy of the Main Menu structure
(CM2) CM should contain only very frequently used commands
(CM3) 3 navigation levels are the maximum allowed in contextual menu.

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