Re: Enabling outline dragging in Metacity?

[Alan <alan ufies org>]

> 1. Why do many Gnome2 dialog boxes not have a Cancel button?
> See for example:
> <http://www.gnome.org/start/2.2/figures/nautilus_preferences.png>
> Was this a deliberate decision? The lack of a Cancel button makes
> life much harder for novices imho, or anybody else who makes
> mistakes :-|

Two things here:
One of the focuses of gnome2 was to go with an 'instant apply' theory
for preferences, so any preference you choose is applied immediately.
This means no more need for cancel/apply buttons.  This has been the
subject of endless flame wars on several lists though, so lets not get
into that again.  

I believe that one of the things noted in the gnome 2.3/2.4 thread was
the addition of a 'revert' button though.

The other thing you may be talking about is that some dialogs don't say
"ok|cancel" anymore, but "save|don't save" or the like.  This is
something from the HIG (I believe) that follows some usability studies
which say that associating the "action" on the button itself, instead of
having a dialog that says "save?" and buttons of "OK/Cancel" you have a
dialog that says "wadddyawannado?" and buttons of "save/don't save".
This removes a LOT of the silly UI problems where quit dialogs would say
(for example) "files unsaved, quit?" "ok/cancel".  You don't have to
read through too much to figure out what is going on, the buttons tell
you.  "save" or "don't save".

HTH,

Alan

-- 
Alan <alan ufies org> - http://arcterex.net
---------------------------------------------------------------------
"The only thing that experience teaches us is that experience teaches 
us nothing.	        -- Andre Maurois (Emile Herzog)