Re: intelligent dialogs

[Dylan Griffiths <Dylan_G bigfoot com>]

[Oops, forgot to CC the list.. here is a copy]

Arlo Rose wrote:
> Once I'm done making sure the Mac OS X button bar, and Explorer side bar is
> correctly done, I'll be publishing complete UI guidelines for all to review.

I don't know why Eazel decided to work on these first.  That's like making
the penthouse before the foundation is poured.

> In the even I haven't introduced myself to this particular Gnome mailing
> list, I'm the primary UI guy over at Eazel.  Five of my eleven years doing
> UI work were spent at Apple where I was the UI (we called it HI) lead
> responsible for moving the Mac UI and Toolbox from System 7 to Mac OS 8.  An
> offshoot of that was the Mac OS 8 Human Interface Guidelines which were
> written, but not finessed and edited, by myself.

I attempted to use MacOS 8 on a friend's iMac.  Too much reliance on the
mouse, and the mouse was too simplified for the reliance on it to be very
rich (ie: context menus, etc) without going back to keyboard modifiers.

I think Apple would've been better to do what I have written in an internal
document for an "NG-interface," which is to say 3 buttons on the mouse --
labeled.  Not blank.  I was also thinking that an LCD above the function
keys would be beneficial so that different programs could give hints about
their usage (did you know that MS Explorer takes F2 to mean rename file?  I
didn't, until I was asked what it did one day and decided to try it).
 
> I should probably note that I'm the maintainer of the Gnome UI Guidelines
> document, but I've yet to begin work on the DocBook version checked into
> Gnome cvs.  That button bar and side bar are eating up all my time.

Yes.  Well, once they are completed, I'd love to get a nice basic-specs
document going.  Some of the points from Dr. Jakob Neilsen's work should be
incorporated, too.  iarchitect.com has a nice hall of shame we can point to
for "what not to do" :-)

I'd be interested if you'd care to review a mockup of a proper Gnome common
file dialog I've designed. 

-- 
    www.kuro5hin.org -- technology and culture, from the trenches.