Re: [Usability] Context sensitive buttons

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On Tue, 2005-02-08 at 16:49, jim Pharis wrote:

> Does this mean that an application can't dim a button but allow it to
> be clickable? As an end user I might not understand why a button is
> dimmed under certian circumstances. 

It would be pretty unusual for a dimmed item to be clickable, yes... I
don't know if gtk+ would even allow you to do it very easily.  (For
better or for worse, Windows, Mac et al. don't allow it either, AFAIK.)

> Am I misinterpreting this guideline or is there another way to relay
the
> information to the user?

A tooltip would be one way that springs to mind, but we don't have an
'official' recommended way of doing this at present.  This is a known
shortcoming and we've talked about it before, although I don't think
there's a bug open about it... feel free to file one against the HIG
with any suggestions you may have.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            Java Desktop System Group
http://ie.sun.com                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems