GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 129902
Add recommendation on the use of text styles in menu items
Last modified: 2020-12-04 18:19:23 UTC
The HIG offers no satisfying answer to this question: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2003-December/msg00129.html So I suggest adding a recommendation on the use of text styles in menus. It's not entirely obvious to me why no current desktop seems to use this.
Some desktops certainly use such a thing-- the Windows styleguide recommends using bold for the default menu item: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnwue/html/ch08b.asp (fig 8.2) and OpenWindows draws a box around it. (OW has default items on all menus incidentally, not just context menus). Note that the HIG also states that the default action should always appear at the top of any context menu: http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/1.0/menus.html#menu-type-popup so while a secondary 'default' indicator might be useful, it should arguably never be necessary.
I'd prefer to keep the guidelines as slim as possible, and I don't generally see the use of bold in menus, so I assume that it's commonly understood not to do this.