I notice a number of 6.x users complaining about the way we present overflow content in menus, via a scrolling arrow instead of the 4.x column manner. There doesn't seem to be any real justification for changing from 4.x behavior (that I can find), other than that it was easier to implement this way, supposedly.

This way to the House of Pain! http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=45700

I can verify that. Worst case is a screen full of menu columns, with greatly increased difficulty to select on each subsequent column. I don't have my Windows UI Guidelines handy, is that even the recommended way? Note that IE6 on Win2K handles the overflow via scrolling too...

Windows default behavior for the Programs menu has, I believe, been changed to scrolling over the years. It used to be columns. However, they offer a pref to change between columns and scrolling in the Start menu properties dialog. I don't believe there is any standard way as unfortunately Windows has left this up to the program, rather than making it an OS feature. So each app implements it as they wish. I'll see what I can dig up in terms of standards on paper. I realize it's IE's method, I'm just raising a repeated concern that I've been seeing in the feedback newsgroups since 6.0. There is, of course, the all- important disclaimer that most users aren't going to submit "Thanks for switching menu styles!" feedback. But I thought it was worth bringing this up to ensure that we're deviating from 4.x behavior for usability reasons, instead of ease of implementation.

The Windows UI guidelines present a nice compromise: "Avoid using multiple columns or scrolling menus." (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en- us/dnwue/html/ch08c.asp) Anyway, this is really a dup of 45700 as John said. That bug just needs to be made more generic. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 45700 ***

One last thing: people on IRC are saying the default for the Windows Programs submenu in the start menu is columns. But as I said, there's a pref.

Not that it's changing anybody's mind, but I just happened to come across " Bookmarks still are displayed in a single, scrolling column, instead of the multiple columns of 4.7, which is an annoyance if you have many bookmarks and are too lazy to organize them into folders." http://www.thirdage.com/news/archive/ALT09011120-02.html

Obvious flame: The Windows guidelines don't matter on Unix. vrfy dup.