[Usability] Indicating required fields

[Matthew Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On 17 Sep, 2005, at 4:11 PM, Kalle Vahlman wrote:
> ...
> Now that I think about it, what possible reason does Evolution have to
> accept a message for sending if the subject is not there?

The principle of least annoyance? :-)

(Netscape 4 for Mac handled this rather cutely: clicking the Send 
button with an empty Subject line focused the Subject field, with "No 
subject was specified" pre-selected for overwriting. If you clicked 
Send a second time the message would be sent, since the Subject field 
was no longer empty. But at least you'd been notified of the missing 
subject, without having to deal with a confirmation alert.)

> "Send" should be disabled until the message is ready for sending, and
> unless it has a subject line, I wouldn't consider it ready. The fact
> that it's the subject that is missing can be hinted visually (with
> accessibility options in mind of course).
> ...

"Visually" how? I'd love ideas on this, as showing which fields in a 
form are required and which are optional is a general problem, 
especially in database-y applications (I encountered it in a 
Point-of-Sale app last week). Web applications usually put a star next 
to the label of compulsory fields, but that doesn't meet the standards 
of elegance expected from locally-installed software ("Subject:*" would 
look silly), and it doesn't work for fields that don't have labels to 
themselves (such as the port number for a single-protocol proxy 
server).

--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/