THE PATTERNS
The first two patterns in this chapter talk about two of the many ways to present actions—one common, one not. When you find yourself reflexively putting actions on an application's menu bar or pop-up menu, stop for a moment and consider using Button Groups or Action Panels instead.
Prominent "Done" Button improves the single most important button on many web pages and dialog boxes. Smart Menu Items is a technique for improving some of the actions you put on menus; this is a very general pattern, useful for many kinds of menus (or buttons and links).
We'd like it if we could complete all user-initiated actions in an application instantly, but that's not reality—some actions are time-consuming. Preview shows the user what's going to happen before such an action is committed. Progress Indicator is a well-known technique for letting the user know what's going on while an operation proceeds, while Cancelability refers to a UI's ability to stop an operation when the user asks it to.
The last three patterns— Multi-Level Undo, Command History, and Macros—all deal with sequences of actions. These three interlocking patterns are most useful in complex applications, especially those whose users are committed to learning the software well and using it extensively. (That's why the examples come from software such as Linux, Photoshop, Word, ...
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