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Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

blog.jim-nielsen.com

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Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#71

Post by drdeadringer »

0manrho wrote: post #43

From an accessibility/localization stand point, icons+text everywhere seems to be ideal. Also, I disagree with: > This posture lends itself to a practice where designers have an attitude of “I need an icon to fill up this space” Sure, that does technically happen, but is in no way preventative or mutually exclusive with the follow on thought: > Does ... the cognitive load of parsing and understanding it, help or hurt…

After my stroke 3 years ago, I find myself in a place meeting accessibility. So the icons are helpful. I cannot necessarily read the text.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#72

Post by deelowe »

watersb wrote: post #67
hinkley wrote: post #23

There was a comic artist I used to follow when I was doing more front end work, who would blog about his craft. One of the things he said that really hit me was talking about silhouettes. The visual noise in certain eras of comics make them very unapproachable. If you repainted your strip by flood filling everything with black, would people have any clue what's going on? One of the things I'm seeing in some of these…

macOS Tahoe has declared war on app icons with distinctive shapes. No silhouettes. If your icon isn't a squircle, it will be shrunk to fit inside a default shape. The penalty box. https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2025/6/2.html The loss of icon silhouettes is a big step down in usability. Erases decades of design guidelines. https://pxlnv.com/blog/roundrect-dictator/ Frankly it's senseless. https://www.flarup.email…

Never thought I'd say this, but I kinda miss Jobs.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#73

Post by netsharc »

daemin wrote: post #57

My biggest design peeve of the examples posted is the inconsistent indentation of each section of the menu. Where if any single item in the section has an icon it gets indented, but if none do it doesn't, and seeing them next to each other is jarring. I feel this is especially inconsistent design because if a menu item has a check mark it indents all menu items in the whole menu. I would have thought Apple would have…

I imagine Steve Jobs would've asked to see whoever designed those menues, picked up their laptop and thrown it out the window...

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#74

Post by zzo38computer »

I agree that there should not be icons in menus (with the exception of those indicating the status, like is shown in the 2005 guidelines). (Arrangements, shapes, etc might also sometimes be useful to indicate, but these should be separate from status indicators if they are present, and should be a part of the text instead in the few cases where they are applicable; in most cases they should not be needed.)

Showing a check mark for if something is active can make sense, and other status indicators, but then it should also indicate if the status is currently absent. (On Windows, some menu items can have a check mark, but if there isn't, it does not tell you if it is one that could have a check mark or not. Indicating this could be useful.)

Another thing that the menus do have, and which they should have because it is good to have, is specifying which keys are used to operate those commands. Windows also has one underlined letter so that you can select it when the menu is displayed, which can also be useful (especially since not all commands have keys assigned normally, so using the keys to activate the menus can be used in this case).

My own programs with menus do not use icons (and do not usually use icons outside of menus either).

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#76

Post by netsharc »

usaphp wrote: post #52

I actually like the icons from his example of Google Docs, it makes it easy for me to locate an action type I’m looking for (add/delete etc) without reading the labels, then once I narrowed it down - I can read the label to find the precise action I want.

But someone got lazy and all the "Delete" or "Add" icons are identical... There's probably a ticket somewhere to "improve the icons" being ignored..

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#77

Post by Pannoniae »

linguae wrote: post #59

I wonder if part of the problem is the lack of color in these examples? I remember Microsoft Office 97 and 2000, which had icons in their menus (albeit only for a few actions, not for every action). However, those icons were colored and appeared visually distinct from each other. Yesterday I booted my 350MHz Power Mac G4 for the first time in 13 years. I booted into Mac OS 9.2.2. I remember the Apple menu having icon…

And the loss of skeuoumorphism. As much as designers chide it, skeuoumorphic interfaces are, when done well, a massive improvement in usability compared to flat/monochrome ones, both for new and experienced users.

It's not really visual "clutter", the shadows / pseudo-3d elements help the brain distinguish between different types of elements, providing contextual information.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#78

Post by adamhartenz »

linguae wrote: post #59

I wonder if part of the problem is the lack of color in these examples? I remember Microsoft Office 97 and 2000, which had icons in their menus (albeit only for a few actions, not for every action). However, those icons were colored and appeared visually distinct from each other. Yesterday I booted my 350MHz Power Mac G4 for the first time in 13 years. I booted into Mac OS 9.2.2. I remember the Apple menu having icon…

Written words don't have colour, and you can parse those with ease.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#79

Post by dragonwriter »

fireflash38 wrote: post #18

When only some things have icons, it's almost like a flag that these things are more special/useful/used. I think that is by far more useful than everything having an icon that you have to think about (or see the text next to it) to understand

I've seen some apps that have icons on menu items when those icons are used for the same functions in other UI elements (shortcut bars, etc.) that don't require digging into the menus, functioning as kind of a reminder that "you can do this elsewhere where you see this symbol". It is kind of like an inverse tooltip (where a tooltip you get by checking the icon and discovering the action description, this you get to by going to the action in the menu and discovering the icon.)

I think this is a useful pattern, but I'm not convinced that having specific distinct icons for menu items to highlight them as important is useful. Presentation order and/or simply a consistent difference in presentation for the highlighted items makes more sense.

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