Disabling Menu Items: Gruber/Spolsky

Joel Spolsky takes a stand against disabling menu items, arguing:

Users see the disabled menu item that they want to click on, and are left entirely without a clue of what they are supposed to do to get the menu item to work. Instead, leave the menu item enabled. If there's some reason you can't complete the action, the menu item can display a message telling the user why.

John Gruber returns fire with the pro-disabling-menu-items argument:

This is why Spolsky is a Windows developer, not a Mac developer. Disabling menu items when they can’t be used is a fine practice — it means that the visual state of a menu item reflects the actual state of the command it represents. ... Spolsky’s suggestion — that you leave all menu items enabled all the time and show an alert when they’re chosen but can’t be used — would be irritating as hell every time you ran into it.

Spolsky’s suggestion is also predicated on the assumption that the user is stupid. Better is to assume that the user is clever and curious and will be able to figure out for themself why a certain command is currently disabled.

As with most polar arguments, this is a false dichotomy: there aren't simply two choices here. Yes, it can be confusing to see menu items disabled and not know why. Yes, it can be irritating to see menu-items enabled even when they can't work, such that triggering one will result in a warning dialog. But there may be ways to solve both problems. For instance, what about disabling menu items but allowing those disabled menu items a way of communicating the reason for which they're disabled where a confused user an learn more. We can assume the user is clever and curious without forcing them to dig through help and experiment to answer the question. For instance, some kind of a tool-tip on a disabled menu item could probably be done. It sounds vaguely ugly, but there's probably some way to make that work. On a windows window, where you're pretty much guaranteed to have a status bar, the message could easily be displayed there. On a Mac, where you might have a menu and no window at all, something like a tooltip seems like your only available choice.