Re: [Usability]GNOME-SEARCH-TOOL: Comment Request

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

On Thu, 2002-08-15 at 14:56, Gregory Merchan wrote:

> No rule, just practice. See all the email, bug reports, and changelogs about
> making Close the default.

They were all about Preferences dialogs though IIRC.  It's reasonable to
assume that the normal usage pattern for a preferences dialog is to open
it, (possibly) change some things and then close it again, so Close is a
reasonable default-- assuming we are to encourage the use of default
buttons at all, of course, but that's is a separate debate :)

> > You should set the default button to be the one that the user is most
> > likely to want to use first, which in the case of a Find dialog would
> > probably be "Find".
> 
> First?

Well, okay, perhaps not the most scientific description, but it's not
far off being right.  Perhaps "the one that the user is most likely to
want to press", then (with the usual caveats about not assigning the
default button to something destructive).

> Last I checked, the HIG is silent on the matter. One may take it that since
> for alerts the OK button or equivalent - i.e., not Cancel, not a secondary
> action, and not Help - should be the default if there is a default and that
> there should be no default if the action is destructive, then the same applies
> to dialogs.

I don't think that necessarily follows... you open dialogs to perform a
specific task, so you want the default to be whatever button helps you
do that task most efficiently.  Alerts are a slightly different kettle
of fish.

> However, there's no section on dialogs.

Miaow :)

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