expletive inserted

Joel writes about disabled/hidden menu items. I don’t completely agree. I think it’s very useful to quickly visually identify what actions are not allowed in any given context. One compromise might be to make the menu item look disabled, but when clicked it gives an explanation of why the selected action cannot be taken. Of course the messages presented to the user need to be made meaninful, instead of just “This action cannot be performed at the current time”, but that seems like a whole can of worms.