Disabled commands, tips on how to enable them.

[Leonard Norrgard <vinsci nic funet fi>]

Greetings.

Below is my $.02 contribution to usability improvement on GNOME (the
text is copied from #usability, where I first put the suggestion
forward).


<vinsci> Well guys, here's a suggestion, but first the reasoning
behind it.  Quite often when using a new application in any windowing
system (I've used them for ~15 years now), I have come across the
dreaded DISABLED COMMANDS in the menus and the like.  Never ever have
I seen any hint as to what to do to enable the command - sometimes
this is obvious (to an experienced user) much of the time it is not.
What I would like to see is that whenever a command is disabled a hint
of what to do to re-enable the command a little text would be appended
to the tooltip (or whatever is appropriate) that said for example: "To
enable the Paste command, you must first select and copy something."
I think this is important enough that it should be made mandatory in
the API for GNOME. It would definitely be a big improvement over that
other Windowing system.

<UnNamed> sounds very nice

<UnNamed> mainly for the reason you say, people wonder why not
avaliable

<vinsci> Yes - and I've found myself in that situation a number of
times. Since the appl code already knows the reason why a command is
disabled it should be mostly straightforward work to add it to current
apps.

Best regards,

-- vinsci


--
Leonard Norrgård <vinsci nic funet fi>