This post originated from an RSS feed registered with .NET Buzz by Mark Levison. Original Post: Ten Most Persistent UI Design Bugs Feed Title: Mark Levison Feed URL: /WebLog/error.aspx?aspxerrorpath=/WebLog/mlevison/Rss.aspx Feed Description: Musings on No Touch Deployment, .NET development and photography Latest .NET Buzz Posts Latest .NET Buzz Posts by Mark Levison Latest Posts From Mark Levison

A co-worker (thanks Tony) passed this on recent days: Ten Most Persistent Design Bugs from AskTog.  They all hit home, but #3 hits the hardest.

'Mysteriously dimmed menu items' - we gray out menu items when they're not available but don't do anything to tell the user why they were greyed out.  So the user is expected to use their innate genius and grok why the item is greyed out.  As a developer this has always bothered me.  Unfortunately in the past when I've suggested solving this problem the reaction is always - but this doesn't fit with industry standards.  In addition Tog's solution (allow the user to click greyed out item for more info) requires custom code for the menus.

What we really need is for industry behemoth (is MS listening) to help solve this problem.  We need both a standard UI guideline and BCL classes that implement it.  If just one or two tiny companies try to solve this problem - users will not notice (after we all know that grey menu items can't be clicked) and not understand what we're trying to do.  If MS does it the rest of us will fall into line over a few years.