Re: UI Guidelines: Dialogs

[thristian atdot org]

On Sun, Feb 11, 2001 at 12:12:02AM +0000, colin z robertson wrote:
> I've been looking at the somewhat moribund UI Guidelines document in
> CVS and I've made some additions to the section on dialogs in
> components.sgml (which previously only contained the section on
> informational dialog boxes). I'd be grateful if people on this list
> could look over what I've written and make any suggestions for
> improvement. Also, if anyone with write access to CVS thinks this
> should be added, they should do so.

Mostly looks good. Some interspersed comments:

> 	<para>
> 	  Action buttons: Most dialogs will have buttons to perform some kind of
> 	  action. These should be labelled with a verb to describe the action
> 	  (they should not be labeled "OK") and positioned to the left of other
> 	  buttons on the bottom row.
> 	</para>

"Yes" and "No" are also right out. Verbs should be used wherever
possible.

> 	<para>
> 	  "Cancel" button: Where possible, this button should be used on modal
> 	  dialogs to dismiss the dialog and return the application the the state
> 	  it was in before the dialog was shown. It should be the rightmost
> 	  button in the bottom row.
> 	</para>
> 	
> 	<para>
> 	  "Close" button: Where possible, this button should be used on modeless
> 	  dialogs to dismiss the dialog without making any further changes to
> 	  the state of the application. It should be the rightmost button in the
> 	  bottom row.
> 	</para>

Close and Cancel are the rightmost buttons, verb-buttons are to the
left of "other buttons" - what are these "other buttons"? If there's
going to be diagrams in this document, some samples wouldn't go astray
- even ascii-art, if necessary.

> 	<para>
> 	  "Previous" and "Next" buttons: If the dialog contains a sequence of
> 	  steps (as in a wizard, for example), they should be navigable with
                         ^^^^^^
I think officially these are "druids".

> 	<para>
> 	  FIXME: Does Gnome contain standard components for implementing these
> 	  buttons?
> 	</para>

There's a Druid widget, if Glade speaks true, but general
"previous"/"next", I dunno.

>       </sect2>
> 
>       <para>
> 	 FIXME: Wizards require a section to themselves. 
                ^^^^^^^
"Druids" again.

>        Should there be a principle that dialogs should not be
>        dismissed by controls external to the dialog? 
>       </para>

For Modeless dialogs only, of course. Mmmm... a toolbar can be a
modeless dialog, but that *should* be dismissed (and summoned) by
external controls..

I don't know if this is the place, but you might also want to mention
things like keyboard tab order, layout (when to group controls, when
not to), control-density (five-hundred text-boxes squished on a form,
or a huge dialog box with two radio-buttons), spacing (though this is
largely controlled by GTK, there's programmer-specifiable "padding" on
most controls), where to use engraved dividers..

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