Re: UI Guidelines: Dialogs (2nd draft)

[John Kodis <kodis jagunet com>]

On Fri, Mar 09, 2001 at 07:34:54PM +0000, colin z robertson wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 06, 2001 at 06:24:49PM -0500, Liam Quin wrote:
> > * 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.

I think that it's a mistake to count on the window manager to
compensate for failings of an application developer.  While I agree
that an "Okay to delete file?" dialog is hopeless, this is because the
author of the dialog didn't provide enough information.  A dialog that
reads "Okay to delete file 'letter-to-mom.abw'?", displayed in a
dialog box raised and centered over an Abiword window would be quite
unambiguous.

> 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.

One of the things that I value most about Sawfish (as well as Gnome
and Unix in general) is the flexability that it gives me.  The more
that assumptions of this sort (windows must have borders; borders must
include a titlebar; titlebars must include a title; the title must
compensate for poorly worded dialog boxes; ...) are hard-coded in
applications that I use, the less flexability I have, and the less I
like it.

The home-brew theme that I normally use has no titles on any window
frame types except for shaded windows.  This has never proved an
inconvenience for me, since I recognize windows by their contents
rather than by their titles (i.e., I can tell that a window is running
Netscape because it's displaying Netscape rather than because its
titlebar reads "Netscape").  It also buys me an extra bit of screen
space for the application.  

I would not be able to do this if an application were written to
display some vital bit of information only in its window decorations.
I would not be happy about any standard that encouraged application
writers to begin treating window decorations as part of their
applications display area.

-- John Kodis.