Re: Default button in dialogs

[Liam Quin <liam holoweb net>]

On Thu, May 17, 2001 at 04:20:54PM -0700, Seth Nickell wrote:
> I would vote for ixnay on the evertray. It makes the dialogue more
> ambiguous and isn't all that useful for most situations.

Actually I quite like the idea of an EverTray, a place to keep
dialogues around for all eternity :-) a bit like the pushpin
in open look and kde and visual C++ etc.  But after thinking
about it for a while I realised you meant "Revert"...

The Apply / Revert / Dismiss properties dialogue model I think can
be a good one, exspecially where it doesn't make sense to apply
individual changes as soon as they are made -- for example because
they would take too long, or because you have to enter more than
one value before any make sense (host/username/password).

Dialog boxes are sometimes a compromise for cases
where direct manipulation isn't possible (e.g. the original mac
didn't have enough memory to run a Finder window for file choosers),

In some cases (e.g. search/replace) the dialogue is not a compromise
in the same way.

I have not seen the results of formal user testing comparing the
various models and how they work for different sorts of situation.

Gnome applications right now don't make it clear exactly when preferences
will be saved, and whether the currently running program is affected,
or all programs, or just this session.  They also don't have a
consistent way to restore defaults to "factory defaults", or to
the previous set of values for this session, or to a user's saved
preferences.  Gnome-terminal is probably the program I use most, and
I find that preferences aer saved or not saved seemingly at random,
and it's not easy to predict which terminal will be affected by the
changes, as you have to remember which one you were in when you
pressed the Preferences icon.

The Try / Revert / Save model that's hinted at in the control center
might be an improvement if more widely used.

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, Open Source XML Database Toolkit, Wiley August 2000
Co-author: The XML Specification Guide, Wiley 1999; Mastering XML, Sybex 2001