Projects/Usability/HIG/Menu Bar

The menubar appears at the top of a main window and provides access to all commands and most of the settings available in an application. It contains menu titles which describe the content of each menu. Each menu title is accessible by accelerator keys, which must be set by the developer.

Guidelines

Group menus in consistency with the KDE standard menu bar.
Provide a menubar in every application main window
Menu item titles should be listed in a standard order
Menu titles on a menubar appear as a single word with the first letter capitalized
Provide accelerator keys for every menu title in the menubar
Turning "on" an item in the menu should always enable the option. Negative options create a double negative which can be confusing. For example, use "Show hidden files" instead of "Hide hidden files".
Don't display menubars in secondary or internal windows
Don't disable menu titles even if no items under that menu are available
Don't use compound words (e.g. ToolOptions), and hyphens (e.g. Tool-Options) in label names; they make words harder to read and recognize
Don't make the menubar 'hideable', users may not easily be able to make the menubar viewable again

Example: Standard Menu Bar

This is the order of menu items in a standard menu bar. If an application does not have options under one of the standard menu items, do not include it in the menu. At the minimum, all windows should have a File (or File equivalent, such as in the case if Konqueror and Amarok) and Help menu.