Grayed out

Not to be confused with greyout.

Here the Redo, Cut and Copy items in a window's menu are grayed out

A greyed out or grayed out (American English) graphical control element is one that is displayed with a light shade of grey (or lighter color), to indicate that it is currently disabled, and cannot be operated nor selected by the user.

This convention is widely used in graphical user interfaces, to visually indicate which actions cannot be taken in the current situation. This approach makes it possible to disable a control when it cannot be used, and give a clear signal of that state, while maintaining the graphical control element in a consistent location, thereby minimizing confusion for the user. A graphical control element may also be shown grayed out in its enabled state, indicating that the user cannot disable it.

References

External links

Human-Computer Interface Design at University of Saskatchewan
Usability Analysis of the Palm Beach Ballot Controversy, Paul Resnick, Associate Professor, University of Michigan School of Information

Widgets (List of …)

Command input	Adjustment handle Button Context menu Drop-down list Hamburger button Menu Pie menu

Data input-output	Checkbox Color picker Combo box Cycle button Date Picker Grid view List box List builder Radio button Scrollbar Search box Slider Spinner Text box

Informational	Balloon help Head-up display in computing Head-up display in video games Icon Infobar Label Loading screen Progress indicator Progress bar Splash screen Throbber Sidebar Status bar Toast Tooltip

Containers	Accordion Disclosure widget Frame/Fieldset Menu bar Menu button Panel Popover Ribbon Tab Toolbar Window Workspace

Navigational	Address bar Breadcrumb Hyperlink Navigation bar Pager Tree view

Special windows	About box Alert dialog box Dialog box File dialog Inspector window Modal window Palette window

Related concepts	File viewer List of graphical user interface elements Layout manager Look and feel Mouseover Widget toolkit WIMP

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