Re: Close buttons in dialogs

[Sérgio Neves <mailpgrupos netcabo pt>]

Hi,
Since we are talking about close buttons, I don't want to miss the 
oportunity to ask why the majority of applications use only one button, the 
close, when in fact they should use an ok button and a cancell button. I ask 
this not because Ms Windows applications uses it all the time, but because 
there is one rule of interface design saying that it may be possible for us 
to undo any changes we have made. Clearly, most of gnome applications don't 
obey this rule. Why does it happen?

Thanks for your answer.
Best regards,
Sérgio Neves
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Calum Benson" <Calum Benson Sun COM>
To: "Eitan Isaacson" <eitan ascender com>
Cc: <gnome-accessibility-list gnome org>
Sent: Monday, July 27, 2009 8:02 PM
Subject: Re: Close buttons in dialogs



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
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> gnome-accessibility-list mailing list gnome-accessibility-list gnome org
>> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
>>
>> Este mensaje y cualquier fichero anexo se dirigen exclusivamente a su
>> destinatario y pueden contener información privilegiada o
>> CONFIDENCIAL. Si
>> no es Vd. el destinatario indicado, queda notificado de que la
>> utilización,
>> divulgación y/o copia sin autorización está prohibida en virtud de la
>> legislación vigente. Si ha recibido este mensaje por error, le
>> rogamos que
>> nos lo comunique inmediatamente por esta misma vía y proceda a su
>> destrucción**
>> ***Antes de imprimir este mensaje o sus anexos, asegúrese de que es
>> necesario. El medio ambiente está en nuestra mano***
>> _______________________________________________
>> gnome-accessibility-list mailing list
>> gnome-accessibility-list gnome org
>> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
>>
> _______________________________________________
> gnome-accessibility-list mailing list
> gnome-accessibility-list gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list

-- 
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

_______________________________________________
gnome-accessibility-list mailing list
gnome-accessibility-list gnome org
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list