Re: changing properties dialogue

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On Thu, 17 Oct 2002, Alan Horkan wrote:
> 
>> Good point.  The keybindings on those dialogs aren't quite up to
>> scratch.  It should really have 'Enter' do OK and 'Escape' do Cancel.
>> Please do file
> 
> I would have thought that the newer GTK2 widgets would/will have this
> stuff setup by default?

They seem to attempt it, but don't quite get it right...

> To be a little bit pedantic it is not just a simple Esc = Cancel and OK =
> Enter.
> Esc is used for cancel and sometimes for No reponses, and in some
> cases to dismiss any window without taking an action (so this could
> even include a message dialog that only had an Ok button).

Yes.

> As for binding Return to Ok,
> When you open a dialog if you are willing to
> accept all the default values, the Ok button should be in focus and you
> you should be able to simply accept by hitting Return.

Yes.

> You probably dont want hitting return anywhere in a dialog to be
> equivalent to okay.  for example in a password dialog hitting return
> after typing in the username it does not make sense to hit ok, it should
> bring you to the next box to enter your password first.  

We had a long discussion about this on the Dillo list.  I checked a number
of browsers, and several have Return be submit, even when there are more
input fields.  Tab is what is used to navigate.  'Return', by its very name,
returns you to where you were before (and 'enter' says to enter the data
you've typed in into the system). 

> It makes sense in other circumstances where more data is needed.  I get
> very annoyed at the Gtk file dialog thinking i want to save to a file
> called dirname/ and then fail and close the save window (but the many
> annoyances of the file dialog is a rant best left to the
> desktop-devel-list).

Don't get me started on the file selector.  They promised a better one in
2.0.4 at the latest:(  It's an embarrassment to GTK.

> This is my understanding of it, off the top of my head, i have not
> thought it through in detail or read any usability papers on the matter
> so my description is obviously somewhat lacking.  I
> assume you were just simplifying for brevity, i will add my comments to
> the bug report.

I'd really like to see some usability papers on this subject.

-Lars

-- 
Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| Hårdgrim of Numenor
"I do not agree with a word that you say, but I   |----------------------------
will defend to the death your right to say it."   | Where are we going, and
    --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire  | what's with the handbasket?