So there's this usability issue on Mac OS X that I have been waiting for Apple to fix for YEARS now, and now that Lion is out and it still isn't fixed, I think it's high time I said something publicly.
Mac OS X menubar separators drive me nuts.
For those of you that don't know what I'm talking about, here are the little culprits:
They look all small and innocent, but their click area is actually pretty big, almost as big as a regular menu option row. So why do they annoy me so? Because clicking on these things makes the menu go away.
If you're on a Mac, you can try it yourself. Open up a menu and click on one; the menu will close.
"What's the harm?" you say? The harm comes from losing context as I try to use my computer. I'm trying to click on "Preferences..." for instance, and just happen to move my cursor a bit before I click and the menu disappears! Wha? I thought I clicked on "Preferences...", but nothing happened. Worse, I have to move my cursor aaall the way back up to the top of the screen, click on "Finder" again, then move it aaall the way back down to "Preferences..." and try it again.
This is stupid. There is no reason to dismiss the menu for mis-clicks like this. They can simply be ignored instead.
I made a quick video demonstrating this problem. You'll also see that if you click just above the top-most menu option (moving the cursor above the "About Finder" option so it isn't highlighted any more), the menu is not dismissed.
A similar thing happens when you click on disabled menu options. These are grayed out, indicating that they are unavailable currently. But a click on one of these options should also be ignored. In short, don't dismiss the menu unless a menu action is successfully invoked.
Observed most recently under Mac OS X 10.7.1 but I think OS X has always behaved this way.
Apparently this is a hold-over from 1984 and have always been on the Mac OS. Probably the Lisa too. http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/56363/what-advantage-does-clicking-a-menu-separator-have
Originally menu prototypes assumed users would click-and-hold-drag-release to open a menu and select an item. In such a situation, the menu should disappear when the release happen, no matter where it happens (even the separator). But when the world evolved to the click-release-move-click-release model, Apple didn't catch up.
This is one thing that frustrates me most when actively using Mac OS as I'm a heavy Windows user and I'm so thankful Bill Gates didn't do something so stupid. Can you believe that Steve Jobs DIED while this thing was still broken? I have heard that Apple does a lot of usability studies to make their OS user-friendly. But didn't they ever think about this nuisance? Perhaps they only tested their usability with heavy Mac users and didn't bother about testing it with Windows users switching to Mac!
Sorry for the rant, but mis-clicking and closing the menu is annoying me so much.
Posted by: Thehunk.blogspot.com | Aug 01, 2012 at 11:31 PM