xTuple.com xTupleU Blog & News Customer Support

Menu Item Naming Conventions in 4.12.0 Enterprise Alpha

While testing 4.12.0 alpha changes, we noticed that a lot of menu item names have been changed, especially ellipses being removed from the end of words (e.g. “Setup…” to “Setup” under at least the Accounting and Sales menus).

Are there other similar changes, and will they be documented in the release notes? Perhaps more importantly, have there been changes to the naming conventions for menu items, and will these be documented?

The ellipsis changes address customer-reported bug 28731. This work is not finished yet, which is why it’s not included in the release notes yet. Here are the guiding principles we’re using:

  • If the menu selection or button click immediately does what was requested, no ellipsis
  • If the menu selection or button click opens a window to ask for additional information, ellipsis
  • If the menu selection or button click asks for confirmation of an action that cannot be undone, no ellipsis
  • If the menu selection or button click performs the action and informs you that the action is complete, no ellipsis

Examples:

  • right-click on a list item and select Delete from the popup menu — no ellipsis
  • Posting a transaction:
    • Post… if the application requests a posting date or if it needs to ask if you want to print the document
    • Post (no ellipsis) if the application posts the transaction without requesting additional information
  • New typically requires no ellipsis, because the application immediately does what you requested — open a window to create a new record

Gil