Re: [Evolution-hackers] Compose should follow Dialog HIG (re location of Send button)

[Rodney Dawes <dobey novell com>]

On Mon, 2005-07-25 at 16:41 +1000, Nigel Tao wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-07-23 at 13:58 -0400, Rodney Dawes wrote:
> > The Compose windows is NOT a dialog. Conceptually or in practice. It has
> > menus. It has toolbars. It has Minimize/Maximize icons. It is a window.
> > I don't know what the sound juicer UI is like, but the Compose window in
> > Evolution is not a dialog. Please do not try to make it act like one.
> 
> Those are fair points - you would want the compose window to show up in
> the window list, for example.
> 
> Maybe I should have said "dialog-like" rather than "dialog".  My
> argument is that, unlike e.g. an office document, the compose window
> doesn't live for a long amount of time - I click compose or reply, type
> my thing, and then fire it off.  And, more importantly, my workflow runs
> top to bottom - I enter in the To field, then move down to the Subject
> field, and then move down to the body.  To finish it off, I hit the Send
> button.  The GNOME HIG recommends that the "affirmative button" or "the
> last thing that you do" is in the bottom right because the eyes start at
> the top left and scans down and right, ending at the bottom right.  That
> is why GNOME's OK and Cancel buttons are in a different order than
> Windows (ignoring the separate issue that GNOME tends to auto-apply and
> hence uses Close rather than OK).

This is a problem with the HIG in that it doesn't clarify "window" vs.
"dialog" very well, and so people end up wanting to do the wrong thing,
thinking that the HIG recommends it. 

> Just my two cents.
> 
> Thanks,
> Nigel.
> 
> P.S.  A somewhat out-of-date SoundJuicer screenshot is at
> http://www.burtonini.com/computing/screenshots/sj-main.png
> This is an application (and it has a menu bar), but it has dialog-like
> one-shot (insert CD, launch SJ, do a small amount of editing (if any),
> and hit the fire button) top-to-bottom workflow.

IMHO, this is wrong. The application tries to combine the
characteristics of a dialog's layout, with those of an app window.
These should be two distinct pieces of UI. Adding the border around
the normal window also looks weird, and doesn't increase the amount of
area for one to grab and resize with.

You wouldn't put the "Save" button in the bottom right of OpenOffice,
Gnumeric, Gedit, etc... would you? I very often, for instance, just
do "Save Draft". This wouldn't close the window, but rather, simply
store the message as a draft.

-- dobey