Re: GnomePropertyBox

[George <jirka 5z com>]

On Sun, Jul 01, 2001 at 04:59:30PM +0200, Dietmar Maurer wrote:
> IMO a dialog with OK/Cancel is very easy, so I cant see the big advantage
> of the "auto apply" feature. It only has the disadvantage that it doesn't
> work for all cases.

That's what I used to think before actually trying it.  And seeing others use
it.  Logically one would say, OK/Cancel with no immediate apply is fine and
logical.  But the immediate effect dialogs are SOOOOOO easy to use, and it's
much simpler to do stuff.  It makes more sense in the real world terms.
Preferences are about making the app work like you want to.  Seeing the
effect as you do it is VERY helpful when doing preferences.  It's far faster
to avoid things like "oh wait, I didn't want to do that", and it's simple for
things like "I wonder what this does", which is 90% of my preference dialog
using experience.

It seems both apple and microsoft came to the same conclusion after a lot of
actual user testing.

George

-- 
George <jirka 5z com>
   There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that
   which should not be done at all.
                       -- Peter Drucker