alt Hacker News> Why do all of the above have ...? No clue.
The "..." convention is used when menu options open a dialog box rather than just immediately doing the action.
Replies
This particular line serves only to highlight the author's limited knowledge. I wonder what they meant by it.
Also greyed out options have a point, they only seem "fucking useless" if you don't know it.
Specifically, it means that more information is required to complete the task (e.g. requesting the filename for saving a file). If the action is literally about opening that dialog (e.g. something like "Show Properties"), the ellipsis is not needed.
The article's author doesn't appear to be particularly tech-literate. I flagged the post on the grounds that it doesn't meet HN standards in general.
Some of these complaints feel like they aren’t specific to Firefox at all, but are UI conventions that used to be ubiquitous and no longer are, much to the chagrin of those of us of a certain age.
He also rails against menu items that are greyed out and unusable, where to me that’s a very useful indicator that the action isn’t available here but that I’m looking in the right place.
When I want to click a menu item and find it greyed out, that tells me something. But when I want to click a menu item and it’s not there at all, I’m confused. Did a developer move it somewhere else? Did the name of the action change? Am I losing my touch?