Re: UI Guidelines: Dialogs (2nd draft)

[Liam Quin <liam holoweb net>]

On Sat, Mar 10, 2001 at 10:50:33AM -0500, John Kodis 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.

You are assuming it would be raised on top and that there would be no
windows between the dialog and the abiword window. That is certainly
not my experience in general.  Even if it were, what if I had 3 of them?

If I bring up gnome-terminal's perferences, i see "gnome terminal" in the
dialog. That's not as good as "gnome terminal preferences", which would
be clearer in a list of windows for example.

But you got my main point -- the filename has to be included in a dlog
that says, OK to delete file?, and ideally you'd be able to get at the
exact file location too.  All too often the information is omitted.


> I would not be happy about any standard that encouraged application
> writers to begin treating window decorations as part of their
> applications display area.

It is part of their display area, and the information there must be correct.
If you make your programs all say "xterm' in their title windows, I won't
like your programs very much. The programs have to work whether or not
the information is displayed.

Lee

-- 
Liam Quin - Barefoot in Toronto - liam holoweb net - http://www.holoweb.net/
Ankh: irc.sorcery.net www.valinor.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org www.advogato.org
author, The Open Source XML Database Toolkit, Wiley, August 2000
Co-author, The XML Specification Guide, Wiley, 1999