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If you click a separator in a menu, such as the right click menu in Finder, it closes again. Why? In all other environments it does nothing, why has Apple decided to close the menu? Is it to avoid accidental clicks?

EDIT:

Also, clicking at the very top or bottom of a contextual menu does nothing! Talk about consistency. Why are these different to the separators?

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closed as not constructive by Daniel Lawson♦ Jul 21 '12 at 13:04

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History.

In the original Macintosh's System Software in 1984, Apple decided that releasing the mouse button over a menu separator should dismiss the menu. This was probably because they viewed holding down the mouse button as a form of concentration; letting go of the button meant it should go away. Where the mouse was didn't matter. You could even be outside the menus entirely, but not pointing at anything particular on the screen.

Later, when Apple made menus click instead of hold, the behaviour was copied over. That was years ago, the the behaviour is still the same.

(It actually probably predates 1984; the Lisa probably did the same.)

I think this was absolutely the right behaviour for click-and-hold menus, but click-and-hold requires more coordination than click.

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Thanks, that makes sense. But even with click and hold you could argue a release within the menu that didn't perform an action shouldn't be considered as the user losing interest in the menu. Hopefully these idiosyncrasies will disappear eventually :) – Aram Kocharyan Jul 14 '12 at 7:17
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I doubt it. It makes more sense this way. You're used to the other, which was probably done that way because it wasn't the way Apple did it. Apple isn't in the habit of changing right decisions to copy bad imitations. – Steven Fisher Jul 14 '12 at 15:15
I see the logic for click and hold, letting go on a separator shouldn't leave the menu open, since it's opened by holding down. But for click menus I figure they say "a click should either perform an action or hide the menu" just like the hold menu did. But I'd argue that clicking a separator has no defined behaviour and is almost always an accident by the user. A user would usually click outside the menu to hide it. So I think it's just carried across from the old hardware. – Aram Kocharyan Jul 15 '12 at 3:27
A click anywhere on the screen dismisses the menu. Why should the menu separator be the one place on the screen that doesn't? – Steven Fisher Jul 15 '12 at 3:29
Oh, you can still click and hold a menu in the latest OS X, and I think hiding it as soon as you let go is the correct approach, but click menus shouldn't act the same way because the user doesn't want the menu to disappear from a missed click. They do want it to disappear in all cases when using hold. – Aram Kocharyan Jul 15 '12 at 3:30
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