[HIG] REVIEW: 4 - Controls

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

4. Controls

Was a little worried not to see anything about Notebooks or Trees in
here (amongst others), which are probably two of the most abused
controls in GUI history  :)

4.1 Buttons

Probably worth saying that if there is no "safe" button in a dialog,
it's acceptable (and indeed preferable) to have no default button. 
(When we talked about this on the list, I got the impression this was
possible but not necessarily obvious, so might want to include a code
snippet to show how it's done?)

4.3 Check Boxes

"Toggling a check box should not affect the values of other controls". 
Nor should it open a dialog box, which is probably worth stating
explicitly as people still insist on doing it.  Ditto for radio buttons.

4.5 Option menus

"In general, radio buttons are preferable to option menus".  So are
lists, I would suggest, for the same reason.

4.7 Progress bars

Perhaps another section that would play more nicely in the proposed
Feedback section, although it's probably worth mentioning them here
anyway.

4.8 Status Bars

What sort of controls can go on a GNOME status bar-- text only?  One
pane only?  Are interactive controls allowed?  It should always be
possible to switch off an application's status bar from the View menu.

-- 
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