<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!-- Copyright (c) 2007-2010 Nokia Corporation and/or its subsidiary(-ies) All rights reserved. -->
<!-- This component and the accompanying materials are made available under the terms of the License 
"Eclipse Public License v1.0" which accompanies this distribution, 
and is available at the URL "http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html". -->
<!-- Initial Contributors:
    Nokia Corporation - initial contribution.
Contributors: 
-->
<!DOCTYPE concept
  PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Concept//EN" "concept.dtd">
<concept id="GUID-6690CEFF-AE08-4881-AF52-70C097EB2871" xml:lang="en"><title>Unavailable
items</title><prolog><metadata><keywords/></metadata></prolog><conbody>
<p>Situations often occur where a certain function cannot be used. In these
cases, the corresponding items in the Options menu must either be hidden,
or there must be an error message given when the user tries to access a function
that cannot be accomplished. The Symbian user interface does
not use dimming of menu items.</p>
<p>This is a trade-off issue: removing unnecessary options makes the Options
menus shorter, but at the same time it changes the menu from situation to
situation, preventing users from learning the function locations. It may even
cause frustration if the users expect some function to be found in the menu,
but it is sometimes not there.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>In case the user has no reason to search for a certain function in
the given situation, it should be hidden. As an extreme example, the Delete
option is not needed when there are no items to be deleted. </p></li>
<li><p>If the user searches for a function, even though it cannot be used
in the current situation, it is often better to display the option and give
an appropriate message if the user tries to access that function.</p><p><ul>
<li><p>An example of this is Digital Rights Management (DRM) protected files:
for example, sending commands shall be visible in the user interface although
sending such a file would not be allowed. Appropriate DRM-specific notifications
are displayed if the user attempts to select one of the options that the user
is not allowed to perform on DRM-protected media objects. This is to facilitate
end-user's learning of the DRM concept.</p></li>
</ul></p></li>
</ul>
</conbody></concept>