Re: Default button in dialogs

[Calum Benson <calum benson ireland sun com>]

Liam Quin wrote:

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

Me neither, but I have seen people very confused by the
Apply/Revert/Close model in usability tests generally-- in particular,
the fact that it's not obvious what settings "revert" will actually
return you to.  People very often expect it to be the settings that they
started with when they opened the dialog, not the ones they last set
with the Apply button.

Another fun problem is working out what model to use to apply changes to
something in a real-time system that's being changed at the same time by
other external factors, but luckily that's not likely to apply to most
GNOME apps  :)

> 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.  

The Amiga has its own spin on this-- its Preferences dialogs have a
"Use" and a "Save" button.  If you dismiss the dialog with "Use", the
settings only apply to the current session, and if you dismiss it with
"Save", the settings are saved to disk and used until you change them
again.  Not necessarily the best implementation from a UI perspective,
but a novel idea that proves useful from time to time.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
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