Situations may occur where a certain function from the Options menu cannot be used. In such cases, the corresponding items in the Options menu must be hidden. The Symbian Belle UI does not use dimming of menu items.
If the user has no reason to search for a certain function in the given situation, it should be hidden; for example, the Delete option is not needed when there are no items to be deleted.
If the user searches for a function, even though it cannot be used in the current situation, it is often better to display the option with an appropriate message if the user tries to access that function.
An example of this is Digital Rights Management (DRM) protected files: for example, sending commands shall be visible in the user interface although sending such a file would not be allowed. Appropriate DRM-specific notifications are displayed if the user attempts to select one of the options that the user is not allowed to perform on DRM-protected media objects. This is to facilitate end-user's learning of the DRM concept.