Very nice roundup of choices. I think that the repetition of popular items in example 1 is already widely in use, so unless visitors are *complete* beginners to computers, they won't get confused.
Also on applications where I have to repeatedly use a menu, anything that moves around on the menu is breaking my workflow a lot, since I tend to navigate to the right spot on the menu by approximate position, then zoom in and actually read the words.
Your point is valid but example 1 sucks if the list of options is very small. Imagine if the options were: Europe, North America, South America, Australia and Asian. The it would be silly to pick out the 3 most common.
Right. With that small selection I would like my list just like that, fixed and all. After a couple of uses I would find the right entry blindfolded anyway, so no use to change the order :-)
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Very nice roundup of choices. I think that the repetition of popular items in example 1 is already widely in use, so unless visitors are *complete* beginners to computers, they won't get confused.
Also on applications where I have to repeatedly use a menu, anything that moves around on the menu is breaking my workflow a lot, since I tend to navigate to the right spot on the menu by approximate position, then zoom in and actually read the words.
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Your point is valid but example 1 sucks if the list of options is very small. Imagine if the options were: Europe, North America, South America, Australia and Asian. The it would be silly to pick out the 3 most common.
Right. With that small selection I would like my list just like that, fixed and all. After a couple of uses I would find the right entry blindfolded anyway, so no use to change the order :-)