Re: [Usability] close icon is misleading

[Dan Zlotnikov <dzlotnik perpugilliam csclub uwaterloo ca>]

>
> >
> > On Wed, 2003-09-10 at 15:27, Rodney Dawes wrote:
> >
> > > How about "OK" or something similar? "Finished" maybe?
> >
> > Hmm, I don't think we could use "OK"; the way things are right now, we
> > effectively use "OK" to indicate that a dialog is not instant apply, and
> > "Close" to indicate that it is.  Something like "Finished" or "Done" is
>
> I get the feeling I have seen 'Done' used before.

The problem with the "OK" and "Cancel" buttons is in their function:
Either one is meant to both close the window and either discard or keep
the changes. I cannot think of a good metaphor for this without the use
of two icons, and since, to the best of my knowledge, no one had ever
used two icons on the same button, things will get confusing.

I recommend text, something simple like "Keep Changes & Close" and
"Discard Changes & Close." I know, it's long, and will probably require
two lines. Text, however, can be rephrased.

>
> I find it particularly odd when a dialog says Cancel when I have already
> made irreversable actions (a find and replace dialog is first time I
> recally seeing this), however I thought Close was quite distinct from
> Cancel.

The two solutions to that are:
Do not have a dialogue which will implement irreversible changes without closing
or

Have a close button that is context-sensitive, and tracks the changes you make within it.

One example (under Windows, sadly) that I can think of is EditPad Lite.
If you were to undo all your actions within a text window, the "save"
button would become inactive. They have a bad implementation of the
tracking mechanism, though: Typing a character and then deleting it will
not disable the save button.

For simplicity's sake, I think the first approach is best.

>
> I really like being able to consistanly hit Esc and have the dialog
> dissappear and take the least destructive action possible, no matter what
> the button label may say, be it Close, Cancel, or even OK.  I couldn't say
> for sure about Gnome (because disabled windows decorations are not too
> frequent) but when in Microsoft Windwos the Close Window decoration X is
> disabled so too is the Esc keybinding.

I'm a supporter of a consistent, user-defined escape or minimize command, whether it's Esc, Alt-F4, or Alt-"Your momma wears combat boots"

The only case I can think of in which such a key should be disable is in
a modal, response-critical popup window. Even in that case...

I have experienced the problem with Mozilla, but it's present in other
apps as well: While waiting to load a page, I switch to a different
desktop. The connection times out, popping up an error on my current
desktop. If I were to go back to the Mozilla desktop without clicking
"OK"  on the popup, I would be unable to do anything to the browser
until I hunted down that bloody popup.

>
> Even then we would still need some sort of icon for "Save As" & "Export".
>
> Removing the X from the button as dobey suggested seemslike the best
> answer but I would not like icons removed entirely from buttons, they were
> a life saver last time i screwed up my copy of Pango and had no text in
> any of my GTK2 applications, and illiterate people use computers too.

Illiterate people may well use computers, but not very successfully.
Show me a dialogue in which there is no text. The contents will be
mostly text-based whether you have iconified buttons or not. I don't
believe that illiterate people are part of the user base for this
project; their needs should be addressed by the accessibility project,
instead.

Dan