Re: [Usability] Familiarity, Accessibility, and Survival of the Fittest

[Liam Quin <liam holoweb net>]

On Thu, Jan 03, 2002 at 11:41:42AM -0600, Gregory Merchan wrote:
> Perhaps the best fit for GNOME is to be like these other
> environments, but more capable, more accessible, much faster,
> and much better looking.

<sarcasm>
Of course.  Free Software projects should never try to innovate.
</sarcasm>

If you don't like instant-apply dialogue boxes, suggest a practical
alternative.  It's true that some UI controls (text and numeric entry
widgets and combo boxes, for example) were not designed to be used
in that way, and canbe difficult in some toolkits (e.g. if changes
happen after each digit as you type).  A slider can be more appropriate
in that circumstance.

Freehand has an "Inspector" pallette that's instant apply on Windows as
well as Mac (and Sun for that matter, although they stopped shipping the
Sun version years ago).  You can use tab to move from control to control
without an apply, but pressing Enter will always make a change; this
saves power users a lot of time on complex drawings.

Where it's even more important to give users control over when things
happen -- e.g. in a 3d rendering package like Bryce, where a change could
take _days_ to render, the buttons are, of course, not instant :-)

I don't thibnk anyone is suggesting making all dialogues instant.

Liam  (Ankh on irc.gnome.wotsit)

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Core staff contact, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
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