I recently posted on when you should and should not use ellipses on buttons. Well, I forgot to consider one more case: launching external applications:

In the case of the dialog above, the “More Smart Tags…” button launches a web browser and brings you to the Smart Tags page on the Microsoft Office site. In my previous post, I would have considered this to be action button rather than a sub-dialog button and would therefore not use an ellipsis, but Microsoft seemingly disagrees. So what is the correct thing to do here?

In Microsoft’s Windows Vista User Experience Guidelines article on Command Buttons, they state:

Indicate a command that needs additional information (including confirmation) by adding an ellipsis at the end of the button label.

I mostly agree with that (except for the part on confirmation (I consider that part of the action itself)). So commands that need additional information (read sub-dialogs) need an ellipsis on the label. Good.

But then this:

This doesn’t mean you should use an ellipsis whenever an action displays another window—only when additional information is required to perform the action. Consequently, any command button whose implied verb is show another window doesn’t take an ellipsis…

So buttons or menus like “About” and “Options” shouldn’t have a trailing ellipsis. I could almost go along with that except that:

1. it’s inconsistent to have some sub-dialog commands have the ellipsis and some not
2. verbs on commands may not be obvious in what they imply
3. the users now need to interpret the meaning of the command and whether it will lead to an immediate action or a sub-dialog.

Do we really want to leave this up to the users to decipher this algorithm of how ellipses work or do we want to use a nice, consistent, unambiguous standard?

So back to the original question of whether external application buttons should have an ellipsis. If we break down what the “More Smart Tags…” button actually does, it’s more of a Go-to-Smart-Tags-webpage button. It doesn’t bring up a sub-dialog in our application; it performs an action. It’s an action button. If it was difficult for the user to distinguish between the launching application and the launched application, that might be a different story, but nowadays who doesn’t know what a web browser is? So if we redesigned the AutoCorrect dialog, we’d probably have something more like this:

Ah, much better. All three buttons perform some action and now they all look similar too and that’s a good thing. No more interpretation. No more deciphering. Everything’s clear at a glance.

We want our applications to be unambiguous. We want our applications to be inviting. We want our applications to be fun. So, as Microsoft says, if we do our jobs right then:

The visual cue offered by an ellipsis allows users to explore your software without fear.

And with my suggestion above maybe we could even add: “and without confusion.”