Re: UI Guidelines: Dialogs (2nd draft)

["Guillermo S. Romero / Familia Romero" <famrom idecnet com>]

c z robertson ndirect co uk (2001-03-09 at 1934.54 +0000):
> > * remember to give the dialogue a title, and to give enough information
> >   to help the user contextualise it. Imagine the user went for lunch and
> >   came back to see the dialogue.
> >   For example, "OK to delete file?" is hopeless, because the user won't
> >   know which file, nor what the consequences are of saying yes or no.
> Do people use window managers that display a title in dialogs? Should
> we be using them? The Sawfish theme I'm using at the moment doesn't. I
> agree though that the dialog should contain sufficient context
> information.

Yes, some people do, maybe via different frame (sometimes vertical
text) or normal frame, it is doable and done. And the window will
appear in task list (bad name, IMO, it is a window list, no?), so
dialogs must have name. The most info, the better, if even the user
does not want to use it.

Also, wm hints should be used as much as possible and correctly, so wm
can know how to group windows, apply frames and many other things.
There is nothing worse that windows that do not work with "minimize
group" or that try to be on top of other just for fun (well, not for
fun but but for not setting or setting wrongly the wm hints).

GSR