Abstract: A de facto standard is emerging for the design of pull-down menus. A set of menu items is presented to the user, with temporarily unavailable items listed in a lighter, "grayed-out" font. This ensures the consistent location of each item, but requires the user to visually scan over and possibly move the cursor through extra items that cannot be selected. Previous research has shown that both location and number of items affect users' ability to select items in menus. We examined the tradeoff between these factors by evaluating an alternative in which inactive items are deleted instead of grayed out. Deleting inactive items resulted in faster menu item selection than did graying them out.

Keywords: Design; Empirical studies; Evaluation; Keyboard input; Menu, pull-down; Pointing device input; Screen output; Visual search

Originally published: Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 31st Annual Meeting, 1987, pp. 722-726

Republished: G. Perlman, G. K. Green, & M. S. Wogalter (Eds.) Human Factors Perspectives on Human-Computer Interaction: Selections from Proceedings of Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meetings, 1983-1994, Santa Monica, CA: HFES, 1995, pp. 100-104.