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The calendar example is from the article, their suggestion is "Event"! But also, yeah that's a weak choice for me to pull from. I guess my point is "File" is j
by graypegg 1mo ago
The calendar example is from the article, their suggestion is "Event"! But also, yeah that's a weak choice for me to pull from.
I guess my point is "File" is just consistent, not that it accurately represents the way the application functions. A lot of UX conversations come down to the naive-user experience, but truth be told, you're only a naive user for a short amount of time. Maybe a week into using macOS for example, I think you'll just mentally map "File" to that list of actions I have in my comment, and you're golden.
Yeah maybe conceptually it's weird that "New Tab" in safari is a File action... but also that's where every application puts its "New Thing" actions. If I want the application to give me a blank slate, I will look for File > New *. "File" is just a word.
If every application had it's own place for those actions that were named for the noun they act on, sure, the naive user touching a desktop OS for the first time is going to breeze through tasks a tiny bit faster, at the expense of the location/name/grouping of menu items now requiring relearning on an app-by-app basis.
There's an alternate history where the file menu is actually labled "Do" or something, and I would make the same argument. "I know what's in the Do menu."
- bediger4000 1mo agoI agree with you about naive-user experience, and world-weary users. Nobody is a naive user in 2026. My oldest kid is 25. He learned to read so he could understand other players and NPCs in RuneScape. He's never been a naive user.