[Usability]Re: An alternative proposal for instant-apply vs. non-instant-apply [amended]

[Reinout van Schouwen <reinout cs vu nl>]

Hi Oliver,

Oliver Logghe wrote:

> The problem is that when a new object/bit of text/whatever is selected,
> this sort of palette must bind to that (or else it is of little use: if
> it is only able to edit the object with which it was invoked, why make
> it a floating palette?). So what happens if you want to copy several
> values from object A's properties into object B's? Or maybe just

> reference A's values while editing B's? (In my experience these are
> pretty commom occurences with property pages of even moderate
> complexity.) The answer is you will probably end up doing a lot of
> clicking back and forth (alternately selecting the two objects) with


The kind of instant-apply dialogs (floating palettes as you say) you're
talking about are non-modal. This raises a new question for me, because
I don't think there was anything said about modality in Adams proposal.
A rule of the thumb is to use as little modal dialogs as possible,
unless absolutely necessary. [1] Adam, do you agree with that?

I don't think clicking back and forth is the only (or the best) answer.
Because of the non-modality of this type of dialog, why shouldn't the
user be allowed to open multiple object property dialogs, bound to their
own objects? I recall having seen this approach in graphics
applications; I think it would be a bad idea to disallow it.

> There are also some preferences cases where it is actually nice to have
> a small preview. Specifically I am thinking of the GTK theme selection
> dialog: the preview box has a nice selection of checkboxes and listboxes
> and so on, some of which otherwise might not happen to be visible just
> then on the users screen. Instant-apply would work just fine, but it
> would still be a good idea to have some kind of preview pane in this
> case (and other cases where the changes may not be immediately visible
> in their entirety).


Hmm, I think preview panes are especially useful in delayed-apply cases,
where instant-apply would take a lot of time to complete (theme
switching, compute intensive graphics filters).

[1] Dix et al., Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd ed., p.136-137,168

-- 

Reinout van Schouwen
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