Re: Default button in dialogs

[Julian Missig <julian jabber org>]

On 31 May 2001 20:33:56 +0100, colin z robertson wrote:
> On Thu, May 31, 2001 at 05:11:06AM -0500, Gregory Joseph Merchan
> wrote:
> > Presently there are two competing proposed guidelines for dialog boxes:
> > 
> > http://www.ndirect.co.uk/~s.robertson/software/ui-guide/html/dialog-guidelines.html
> > 
> > http://www.delanet.com/~jkmissig/interface-guide.txt
> > 
> > As a contributor to the latter I clearly favor it, though the former looks nicer and makes some excellent points with regard to modality.
> 
> I'd very much like to see these two documents reconciled and one of
> them declared official (or official-ish). The current state of dialogs
> in GNOME is horribly inconsistent. Unfortunately, being the author of
> the first document, I don't want the differences resolved in the same
> way that you do.
> 

Well, I want to get this resolved before gtk2 is released so that we can
get the changes into pango and gtk2 for the dialogs. So let's start off
with what we *do* agree on:

Esc should be equivalent to "Cancel" or the closest thing to that in a
dialog.

Enter should activate the default button. (Although we disagree on which
button should be default, I believe we agree on this)

Space and any other key should *not* activate the default button. (This
has not been discussed, but it's *extremely* annoying to be in the
middle of typing, have a dialog pop up, and activate the default when
you press space)

Dialog buttons should have keyboard shortcuts (By using Alt+dominant
letter in the name, which can be accomplished in gtk by making the label
something like "_Save" or "_Cancel")

Do we agree that the *order* of buttons should be like that in the
second proposal? I believe that Apple's Mac guidelines back up the
button order chosen there.

> 
> > I would like to see what the result is of combining them with conflicts resolved in favor of the #interface guidelines. We approached the problem with only a few general principles and no testing at our disposal and have rather unsurpisingly reproduced some parts of the acclaimed Mac guidelines. In particular, and in favor of the #interface guidelines, these parts of the Mac guidelines should be noted:
> > 
> > http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/mac/HIGuidelines/HIGuidelines-139.html#HEADING139-0
> > 
> > http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/mac/HIGOS8Guide/thig-52.html#HEADING52-114
> > 
> > Also the first paragraph of:
> > http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/mac/HIGuidelines/HIGuidelines-139.html
> > 
> > Of particular note in that paragraph is that, "The default button is not necessarily the button in the lower-right corner; it should be the one for the action that the user is most likely to want to perform." But for one, I can think of no principle which is a substitute for user-testing to determine what the user is most likely to want to perform. That principle is that irreversible destructive actions are generally undesirable; hence, the exception on point 4 of the #interface guidelines, "... except for cases where affirmative is destructive ..."


Julian
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