Re: UI Guidelines: Dialogs

[Calum Benson <calum benson ireland sun com>]

"Michael T. Babcock" wrote:

> Note: this may seem less intuitive to normal users than to HI 'experts' ...
> ESC is on the left of the keyboard, and Enter is on the right. 

Fair point-- actually I have no objection at all to the way the Mac does
it (action buttons rightmost, Cancel leftmost), GNOME just seems to have
adopted the Windows way up until now.

> Newer computer users (last few years) aren't aware of the concept
> that Enter _does_ things (other than enter a carriage return) -- 

Nor have they any need to be aware of it; keyboard shortcuts are really
still 'expert' features in a WIMP environment, with the exception of
people who really do need to know about them (e.g. those who are unable
to use a mouse).

>many database users expect it to go to the next entry field, 
>for example (just as it would on a typewriter).

And there's no reason why it shouldn't still do that, in form-filling
dialogs at least... I get just as annoyed as anyone when I have a bunch
of textboxes to fill out, press Enter to finish one entry and start the
next, and either the dialog closes or nothing happens at all.

So yes, there's certainly a difficult problem to resolve here in that
sometimes (experienced) keyboard users expect Enter to work like Tab,
and sometimes to work like OK, and it's hard to provide a rule that
allows optimal keyboard navigation for every dialog.  As you say, maybe
Enter isn't the best choice for a 'save and close' shortcut at all, but
I suspect we're stuck with it, at least until keyboards with "OK" and
"Cancel" keys become widely available  :)

> Nothing should be a shortcut for "get out of here and discard everything I
> just did" without an "are you sure" prompt for obvious reasons.

Well, that's another one I think it's hard to generalise about.  In
general you're right of course, minimising the possibility of error is a
key UI design principle.  But looking at the keyboard shortcut as an
'expert feature' again, the sort of people who use it most are exactly
the sort of people who would get most annoyed at having to press it
twice when 'once would do'!  

Esc is also fairly detached from the rest of the keys on the keyboard,
so you're less likely to hit it by accident anyway-- probably not any
more likely than clicking the "Cancel" button in the dialog my mistake. 
So should the Cancel button always pop up a confirmation dialog as well?

You could also argue it depends on how much 'damage' closing the dialog
is going do-- if you've spent ten minutes perfecting your settings in a
dialog, there's more of a case for having to confirm your actions than
there is with a simple dialog containing a couple of controls that you
can easily open and change again.  But trying to build in that sort of
'intelligence' is just asking for trouble!

Luckily, of course, we're going to get the answers to all these tricky
UI problems in the forthcoming GNOME style guide, so we don't need to
worry about them  :o)

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems