Re: HIGification of dialog boxes

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On Thu, 17 Jul 2003, Krzysztof Foltman wrote:
> Cyrille Chepelov wrote:
> 
>>Well, FWIW, I find the "instant apply" thing extremely confusing and
>>frustrating. What's wrong with a cancel button?
>>
> Cancel is for modal dialogs.

I find *properly implemented* instant apply dialogs very nice by now.  I
was confused as first, too, but I think that's just years of learning the
tricksiness of explicit apply dialogs resisting.

It's important to have good undo for that to work, and also to not apply
untill the user is done entering the data -- don't try to update the
timeline display after each character has been entered.

> Property dialogs in GNOME are encouraged to be modeless (a
> controversial HIG idea, but not that bad IMO). You're supposed to be
> able to switch between document and the line width window.

I really, really like modeless dialogs.  Modal dialogs are evil and should
only be used in truly extreme cases.  But modeless/modal isn't quite the
issue here -- you'll notice that our dialogs are mostly modeless.

> Instant apply with Revert/Undo button, maybe ? (I don't know if it's
> kosher HIG-wise, but it may be nice/useful)

Could work.  But Revert doesn't make much sense for modeless dialogs.  Undo
is more reasonable -- sure, the diagram has undo, but it'd be cumbersom to
switch to the dialog window every time.

> As for switchable instant/explicit - no, please. It's not that easy,
> and that time could be better spent on more important things (like
> getting rid of the dreaded CSDI model ;-) ).

CSDI?

-Lars

-- 
Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| HĂ„rdgrim 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?