JavaTM Look and Feel Design Guidelines: Advanced Topics > Part I: General Topics > 3: Menus >

3: Menus

In most applications, menus are one of the main ways that users issue commands. To provide maximum usability, menus must be logically ordered and easily accessible.

This chapter helps you design usable menus. It provides guidelines for designing:

• Menu elements--menu titles, menu items, mnemonics, and so on
• Common menus--menus found in most applications
• Contextual menus--menus whose items affect the object or area under the pointer

To understand this chapter, you should be familiar with the menu-related terms (such as drop-down menu) in Java Look and Feel Design Guidelines, 2d ed. This chapter is intended only for applications with menus.

Java Look and Feel Design Guidelines: Advanced Topics. Copyright 2001. Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.