Preferred UX for an empty-but-selectable item in a menu

Question

In a project I'm working on, we have a nav menu where items are colored when the relevant section has information beneath it, or faded when there's nothing available to the user. In the case of an admin, these items may have no useful information but may still be clickable (since things like "Add news item" or "Add file" are implemented as sub-menus).

The call from On High has come down to make these admin items stand apart somehow. Since we're already using the faded text for unclickable items, I was wondering if there's an established UI convention for denoting that an item is clickable, yet contains no information.

And yes, I've already asked why we're bothering to show items that aren't available to the user. The short of it: because On High wants to.

Answer 1

Short answer, no I don't think there's a convention for this. Lots of people would say if its not applicable, don't show it. However, there's some debate on this. One of the reasons Microsoft started using The Ribbon in MS Office is because they wanted to get away from dynamic menus where options hid and showed 'intelligently'. Users couldn't figure out the rules for what appered where, and when.

Maybe separate the concerns here: 1) how to indicate the item is clickable, and then 2) how to indicate the item contains no information.

The first one is relatively well established -- blue underlined text. You can also make it look like a button Of course, if you've got a site-specific look for your hyperlinks, use that. Basically don't break the users' expectiations of what things are clickable.

Second, how to show there's nothing there worth clicking on. I think what you want is some visual indication of the priority/utility of these admin links relatively to others. Some options:

• Can you move the admin links to the bottom of a list?
• Add a number indication how many things are on the other side of the link?
• Strikethrough on the text?

Answer 2

Since there are no hard-and-fast conventions on this sort of thing, just remember that anything you do which is consistent will work. Some things will just work better than others.

No matter what you choose, the user will learn after a few tries what the new method of empty indication is.

If it is well thought out and consistent, they will probably get it after a couple of clicks.

Also, remember that too many highlights, colors, fades, and underlines will wash out any amount of effectiveness at visually organizing your menu so it is easy to use. At some point it can actually get harder to use by over-organizing things.

Think about it this way: There are two boxes sitting on a virtual shelf. One is red and the other is blue. The selected box is identified by a differing color than the other box... Now, which is the selected box?