Re: [Usability] Indicating required fields

[Kalle Vahlman <kalle vahlman gmail com>]

2005/9/19, 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).

By visually I mean the required fields would have a different
background color, bold text and blink to bright yellow and back.

Or maybe not the last one.

Thinking about it, this kind of behaviour/hinting should really be
implemented in the gtklabel and/or gtkentry. HildonCaption from the
Maemo platform has a "mandatory" flag (I think it's just an extra icon
displayed), something in the spirit of that could be very useful for
this kind of hinting too as it's a common situation across all apps.

/me putting the old thinking cap on

Yarr!

-- 
Kalle Vahlman, zuh iki fi
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