Re: Comments on dialog proposal



On Sun, Sep 02, 2001 at 09:48:09AM -0700, Seth Nickell wrote:
> Nils and I discussed this and length with respect to Control Center
> preference panes. We propose:
>     [Help]              [Undo][Done]
[...]
> 
> For the sake of discussion, Adam prefers:
>     [Help]             [Undo][Close]

For Close, is the operation I want to hide the windoe so it gets out
of the way? I assume that if it's a property dialogue whose changes take
instantly, it is not modal.

If I am right on both counts, maybe "Hide window".

There was a 1970s study (published by DEC in a book on UI design whose
title I no longer know, sorry, in the early to mid 1980s) indicating
that there is a subtle problem with "Help".

Asking for help in many cultures is tantamount to an admission of
personal failure, and causes an ego problem, so people don't do it.
If you rename the button, "Explain" or, "What's this?", you are placing
the blame on the coputer for being too cryptic, and people will use the 
facility much more.

(I am intermixing the conclusions of the study and their speculations
on the cause though, sorry)

Questions you might need to ask whan a dlog is visible include
* why did this window appear?
* what is it?
* what can I do with this window/tool ?
* how do I use this tool?
* what values are legal for these controls?
* what effect does _this_ particular control have?
* how do I go back to where I was?
* how do i do [unrelated task]?
* is there an easier way of getting here?
* are tehre preferences that affect the ehaviour of this tool?  how do I
  reset them to factory defaults, or to my own settings?

I know this is a little off-topic for button labels, but sometimes it
helps to look one step further...  I'd suggest, then, maybe
    [About]             [Undo] [Hide]
as an alternative for experiments.

The down side to About is that vanity and advertising have caused
Help->About to tell you nothing about a program, so that people have
even less trust in help menus and buttons labeled "About".

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




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