Close buttons in dialogs

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

Hi all,

One question I was asked at GUADEC this year was regarding the old  
chestnut of Close buttons in the bottom corner of instant-apply  
dialogs, which some designers (including Apple's, if you look at their  
OS X system preference dialogs) consider to be an unpleasantly- 
redundant feature.

One of the main areas of resistance to the removal of such buttons the  
last time it was considered was feedback from assistive technology  
users, who (albeit in an unscientific straw poll) expressed an overall  
preference for retaining the explicit Close button, in addition to the  
window manager Close button and associated keyboard shortcut.

With GNOME 3.0 now just a couple of blocks away, if not quite around  
the corner just yet, I was wondering if this is still the consensus?   
Or have AT improvements or any other factors now reduced the need for  
explicit Close buttons in instant-apply dialogs?

Thanks,
Calum.

--
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            OpenSolaris Desktop Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems