Chicken or the egg?

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

John Posada wondered: <<Where "XX" is a type of action and is a choice 
on a dropdown list and "YYY" is the label of the dropdown list: Select 
"XX" from the "YYY" list of available actions. Or From the "YYY" list 
of available actions, select "XX".>>

[Triple-X changed to Double-X to sneak past the spam filters. <g>]

It would generally seem to be more beginner-friendly to specify where 
to look (e.g., the File menu), then once the person is looking there, 
what they should look for. This matches the sequence of action (find 
the location, then find the choice) better. Doing it the other way 
around places a bit more of a cognitive burden on the reader: they have 
to reverse the order of the instruction to match the order of the steps 
in the task.

This probably isn't a huge deal even for a beginner, but I find that 
matching the sequence to the action works better. (Particularly when 
I'm tired and frustrated dealing with intractable software.) I wouldn't 
bet that you'd get hugely significant differences between the 
approaches in a scientific study, but it would be interesting to find 
out.

--Geoff Hart   ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)


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