Re: [Usability] Re: Control-center styles

[John Kodis <kodis jagunet com>]

On Mon, Dec 31, 2001 at 06:41:08AM +1300, Matthew Thomas wrote:

> Because leaving the `Close' button in would slow down the interface for
> *every other* user. (Not to mention wasting a whole button-row's worth
> of screen space.)

When given the choice, I tend to close dialogs (and most other
windows) using the close button supplied by the dialog because,
contrary to your argument, I find that this speeds up the use of the
dialog.  This is because the close button in a dialog can be made much
larger and easier to hit than the tiny and cryptically marked close
button provided by the window manager.  It's impractical to make the
WM close button as large, since this would needlessly bloat up the
space required for the titlebars on all visible windows.

> Perhaps, for that particular brokenness, someone could implement a
> global `My Window Manager is Stoned' mode, which adds a `Close' button
> to the bottom of every window. And hey, why stop there? Why not add a
> `Maximize' button to the bottom of every window too?

Simple: because closing the dialog is the only action that's going to
happen each and every time that a dialog pops up, typically within a
few seconds of the dialog's appearance.  The speed improvement makes
it worth providing an easy to hit target for such a common case.

-- John Kodis.