Re: Close buttons in dialogs

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On 24 Jul 2009, at 17:46, Eitan Isaacson wrote:

> So I just changed my mind about this. Of course, this is as long as  
> all
> dialogs could consistently be dismissed with escape.

Welcome to another controversy :)

The GNOME UI guidelines say that Escape should only ever be bound to  
Cancel, and not to Close -- something we chose to inherit from the MS  
Windows guidelines.  (Apple's guidelines are a bit more ambiguous.)

However, a few years ago, the gtk developers decided Esc should be  
bound to Cancel as well[1].  So today, if you press Escape without  
having paid too much attention to which buttons are actually present  
at the bottom of the dialog, any changes you made in the dialog may  
already have been saved, or may just have been discarded...

Cheeri,
Calum.

[1] Largely, IIRC, because there were quite a few complaints that Find  
dialogs didn't close when you pressed Escape.  There were few if any  
complaints about any other dialogs, which suggested to me we needed to  
redesign the way Find dialogs worked in GNOME.  But as things turned  
out, we never did, so the gtk developers took the initiative to solve  
the problem their way instead.

More background/disucssion to this at <http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=101293 
>


> 2009/7/24 Dorado Martínez, Francisco Javier <FDMA once es>
>
> > Hi all
> >
> > Agree +1 Eitan's comment.
> >
> > A person that can use a mouse and see the window buttons to close is
> > redundant the close button in the GUI, but if I was a beginner I  
> > don't know
> > that there is these ways of closing this dialogs and less I don't  
> > know that
> > with esc, or alt +f4 I can close it.
> >
> > Anyway, I always look for the close button when I finish a  
> > configuration. I
> > always used the alt + f4 for closing applications, and esc for  
> > cancel (I
> > don't know why) :-).
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Javier
> >
> > -----Mensaje original-----
> > De: gnome-accessibility-list-bounces gnome org [mailto:
> > gnome-accessibility-list-bounces gnome org] En nombre de Calum Benson
> > Enviado el: jueves, 23 de julio de 2009 18:14
> > Para: gnome-accessibility-list gnome org
> > Asunto: Close buttons in dialogs
> >
> >
> > 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
> >
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--
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