Dragging URLs home
Urban A. Haas
I've been changing homepages in the Prefs panel since the beginning. I
noticed Moz really doesn't do drag and drop yet, but wouldn't it be
neat, when hooked up, to be able to change your homepage by dragging
that URL icon on top of the home button to change your homepage the same
way you dropped it into bookmark folders?
--
Urban A. Haas
CEO - Urban Technology, Inc.
Minneapolis, MN USA
Phone: (952) 595-8810 Fax: (952) 595-8710
E-mail: uh...@urbantechnology.com (mailto:uh...@urbantechnology.com)
Web: http://www.urbantechnology.com
This e-mail was composed of 100% recycled bits.
Matthew Thomas
>...
> I've been changing homepages in the Prefs panel since the beginning. I
> noticed Moz really doesn't do drag and drop yet, but wouldn't it be
> neat, when hooked up, to be able to change your homepage by dragging
> that URL icon on top of the home button to change your homepage the
> same way you dropped it into bookmark folders?
Absolutely. Once drag-and-drop is working reliably XP, we should be
going through every element in the interface and asking ourselves `now,
what could be dragged to this element to do something useful?'.
* Dragging the proxy icon (or a bookmark, or an icon from the platform's
file manager, or a link) to the Home button should set the home page.
* Dragging a mail message into the top part of the mail filter editing
window should change the window to include all characteristics of that
message (then unnecessary characteristics can be deleted from the
filter).
* Dragging a mail message into a particular field (e.g. a Date field)
when editing a mail filter should set the field to the relevant value
(e.g. the date) of that message.
* Dragging a mail folder into the `Find Messages' window should set the
window to find messages in that folder.
* Dragging a Web page link to the Composer button should open the linked
document in a Composer window for editing.
* Dragging the proxy icon (or a bookmark, or an icon from the platform's
file manager, or a link) to the Address Book button should open a
dialog asking you to check the checkboxes for any of the e-mail
addresses found in that document which you want to add to your address
book.
And so on. Doing lots of intelligent drag-and-drop is one of those
things where users will say `hmm, I wonder if this works?', try it, find
that it does do exactly what they were expecting, and utter an `ahhhhh'
of satisfaction.
--
Matthew `mpt' Thomas, Mozilla user interface QA
<http://critique.net.nz/project/mozilla/>
Joona Nuutinen
> things where users will say `hmm, I wonder if this works?', try it, find
> that it does do exactly what they were expecting, and utter an `ahhhhh'
> of satisfaction.
Oh yes! But Mozilla should ask every time it tries to change the start
page to something else that it was, because if someone makes it
accidentally he hates this feature for the rest of his life. All this
kind of things must be considered when making all those D'n'D functions.
--
<<<Jonde -mozilla's friend- Original>>>
...MacGyver Messiah...
http://personal.inet.fi/cool/net (Finnish)
Mike Pinkerton
> Oh yes! But Mozilla should ask every time it tries to change the start
> page to something else that it was, because if someone makes it
> accidentally he hates this feature for the rest of his life. All this
> kind of things must be considered when making all those D'n'D functions.
That would be like the finder asking "are you sure you want to move
these files" when moving files with d&d. There's just no point. the user
shouldn't be interrogated to confirm direct actions.
--
Mike Pinkerton
Mac Browser Weenie
pink...@netscape.com http://people.netscape.com/pinkerton
jesus X
> That would be like the finder asking "are you sure you want to move
> these files" when moving files with d&d. There's just no point. the user
> shouldn't be interrogated to confirm direct actions.
Remember Mike, there are stupid people out there. The folks who need this
are the same who buy "Windows 95 for Dummies!" and "Macs for Dummies!" =-]
--
jesus X
email [ jesusx @ who.net ]
web [ http://www.bluephone.net/ ]
tag [ But it's a KILLER bunny rabbit! ]
warning [ Everything not Strictly Forbidden is now Mandatory. ]
Gordon Henriksen
> Mike Pinkerton wrote:
>
>> That would be like the finder asking "are you sure you want to move
>> these files" when moving files with d&d. There's just no point. the
>> user shouldn't be interrogated to confirm direct actions.
>
> Remember Mike, there are stupid people out there. The folks who need this
> are the same who buy "Windows 95 for Dummies!" and "Macs for Dummies!" =-]
UI authors shouldn't patronize users with these sorts of questions. The
Mac's Finder asks about some operations and it doesn't bug me one bit.
Windows Explorer, however, annoys me to no end with the actions it wants
confirmed.
For instance:
The Finder
Asks you to confirm replacing files with the ones you are moving
or copying.
Rationale:
A nontrivial loss of data is a side effect of the operation and
there is a very high probability that that action would be
occuring as a result of an accident.
Windows Explorer
Asks you to confirm moving any .exe file.
Faulty Rationale:
Moving an probram can make it inoperable by disassociating it from
its related files.
Rebuttal:
The user is directly operating upon the executable and there is no
loss of data.
Now:
According to jesus X, Mozilla
Should ask you to confirm changing the home page location via drag
and drop.
Faulty Rationale:
Changing the homepage could occur accidentally. And: Users are
stupid.
Rebuttal:
Dragging a the URL proxy down a half inch isn't likely to be an
accidental action. The loss of data is trivial, and this is also a
direct action by the user without hidden side effects. And: Users
who are not stupid do not appreciate being treated as if they were.
--
Gordon Henriksen
gor...@sunvalley.net
jesus X
First, this was just a friendly jest. But:
> Now:
> According to jesus X, Mozilla
> Should ask you to confirm changing the home page location via drag
> and drop.
No, I don't think it should.
> Faulty Rationale:
> Changing the homepage could occur accidentally. And: Users are
> stupid.
Again, I DON'T think it should confirm, but the latter part is partially
true. There are a lot of stupid users. We're all stupid sometimes. Some
users though never bother to even TRY to learn a program, and just whine
when a button gets moved half an inch over, or something totally trivial.
> Rebuttal:
> Dragging a the URL proxy down a half inch isn't likely to be an
> accidental action. The loss of data is trivial, and this is also a
> direct action by the user without hidden side effects. And: Users
> who are not stupid do not appreciate being treated as if they were.
I totally agree. In Windows, if I move a file by accident, I just hit CTRL-Z
and back it goes. And just out of habit, I right-drag everything, so even
should I accidentally drag something, I get a context menu first, making
escape easy. A confirmation dialog every ten seconds is a pain in the ass.
Daniel J Peng
> Remember Mike, there are stupid people out there. The folks who need this
> are the same who buy "Windows 95 for Dummies!" and "Macs for Dummies!" =-]
dialogs and torture just Windows and Mac users? ;-)
Dylan Schiemann
home page, and have a checkbox they can fill to not ask again, analogous to what
is done with security and passwords. Also, maybe a drag and drop set of
preferences for what to ask for confirmation and what not to ask will give high
end users more control since they will know which actions they are likely to
mess up on. For example, it is common to accidentally drop content into wrong
folders due to the occasional lag in Windoze Explorer, but it is rare to drag a
listing from Explorer into the browser window and not want it to load in the
browser window.
-Dylan
jesus X
>
> On Tue, May 23, 2000 at 11:55:54PM -0400, jesus X wrote:
> > Remember Mike, there are stupid people out there. The folks who need this
> > are the same who buy "Windows 95 for Dummies!" and "Macs for Dummies!" =-]
> So, you mean you want to let Linux users live without annoying confirmation
> dialogs and torture just Windows and Mac users? ;-)
No, I want rid of confirmation dialogs altogether! Maybe set a pref during
the install. "Where do you want to install Mozilla? Do you want Confirmation
Dialogs? do you run with scissors?" =-]
Roland Tepp
something accidentially to wrong place (I used to have a mouse that had
a nasty habbit of sometimes releasing an object I was dragging without
any apparent reason - sometimes even doing dblclicks and such) - and
some actions, like changing homepage location, should definetly have
confirmation, because without one, the user might just get confused
about what happened - he might even not notice anything different until
next time he openes his/her browser...
Come to think of it - Even better if there would be another checkbox in
the prefs to enable/disable d'n'd (by components or entire mozilla)
Dylan Schiemann wrote:
>
> Why not ask the user the first time they do a drag-drop action to change the
> home page, and have a checkbox they can fill to not ask again, analogous to what
> is done with security and passwords. Also, maybe a drag and drop set of
> preferences for what to ask for confirmation and what not to ask will give high
> end users more control since they will know which actions they are likely to
> mess up on. For example, it is common to accidentally drop content into wrong
> folders due to the occasional lag in Windoze Explorer, but it is rare to drag a
> listing from Explorer into the browser window and not want it to load in the
> browser window.
>
> -Dylan
>
Joona Nuutinen
> home page, and have a checkbox they can fill to not ask again, analogous to what
> is done with security and passwords. Also, maybe a drag and drop set of
> preferences for what to ask for confirmation and what not to ask will give high
> end users more control since they will know which actions they are likely to
> mess up on. For example, it is common to accidentally drop content into wrong
> folders due to the occasional lag in Windoze Explorer, but it is rare to drag a
> listing from Explorer into the browser window and not want it to load in the
> browser window.
Agreed. That's how most of the other that kind of dialogs work also.
Joona Nuutinen
Yes. but there is no "stupid" user, he/she can be knowledgeless, that
doesn't mean stupid.
Brian
Somehow those confirmation dialogs are always incredibly hard to
understand. I often find myself staring at a big blob of text detailing
what I'm about to do, some of the possible negative consequences of that
action and then some sort of cryptic question like: "Are you should you
would not like to recheck this setting on future occurances?"
Okay, so I exaggerate. The point is, I never read those confirmation
dialogs, I just take a guess at their meaning and click one of the
buttons (usually the one which ISN'T highlighted).
There needs to be a better system (if one at all). Perhaps just better
visual feedback, like a tooltip which popups up reading "Change homepage
to: Yahoo!" or whatever the current webpage title or URL is (but only
while the cursor is over the home button of course).
On that point, perhaps D&D needs better feedback in general. I never
know what I can D&D something onto. Perhaps when I begin to drag a
bookmark (or proxy or whatever you call 'em) the targets (eg the
bookmark sidebar, the personal toolbar, all text windows, the
addressbook icon, the composer icon etc.) can light-up somehow. I'm sure
this has been done before. Though then again, that might take away the
fun and mystery of D&D.
Brian.
Matthew Thomas
>
> Somehow those confirmation dialogs are always incredibly hard to
> understand. I often find myself staring at a big blob of text
> detailing what I'm about to do, some of the possible negative
> consequences of that action and then some sort of cryptic question
> like: "Are you should you would not like to recheck this setting on
> future occurances?"
Perhaps you'd like to mosey on over to
<http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38933> and make sure those
confirmation dialogs are understandable ... because they're pretty important.
> Okay, so I exaggerate. The point is, I never read those confirmation
> dialogs, I just take a guess at their meaning and click one of the
> buttons (usually the one which ISN'T highlighted).
Which is why the Macintosh interface guidelines have always suggested,
and the Windows interface guidelines started suggesting as of this year,
that buttons should have meaningful words in them and not just `Yes' or `No'.
>...
> On that point, perhaps D&D needs better feedback in general. I never
> know what I can D&D something onto. Perhaps when I begin to drag a
> bookmark (or proxy or whatever you call 'em) the targets (eg the
> bookmark sidebar, the personal toolbar, all text windows, the
> addressbook icon, the composer icon etc.) can light-up somehow. I'm
> sure this has been done before.
Yes, it has. Standard Macintosh behavior is to draw a border around the
drop target in the UI highlight color, and there's really no reason why
Windows and X couldn't follow suit.
Ben Goodger
soon as part of general D&D hookup for navigator. Matthew, if you
haven't already please file these excellent D&D ideas as bugs and I'll
do my best to hook up the ones applicable to navigator/global.
> And so on. Doing lots of intelligent drag-and-drop is one of those
> things where users will say `hmm, I wonder if this works?', try it, find
> that it does do exactly what they were expecting, and utter an `ahhhhh'
> of satisfaction.
>
Ben Goodger
me for it:
The result of changing the homepage location accidentally is not
immediately obvious, and dragging links into this area may be something
people do frequently as part of adding and sorting bookmarks. Thus if
they accidentally drag onto home, nothing will have appeared to have
happened, and they may later find their home page has changed and not
understand why.
As a result I pop up a dialog asking if this is what they actually
meant. THe dialog has a checkbox to the effect of 'don't ask me this
again' so that people who feel they have accurate control over their
pointing devices can turn this off ;)
Robert Kaiser
Mark Anderson
> Cancel. The choices should be Yes and No, shouldn't they?
Ideally, they'd be Continue and Don't Continue.... :)
Ben Goodger
remember if I can easily control the OK cancel text from
nsICommonDialogs::ConfirmCheck, I'll look and see.
As for the layout of the dialog, it sucks. commonDialog.xul/js needs a
smack to the head, which I'll probably get around to doing after PR2.
Dean Tessman wrote:
>
> Pretty slick, except that I think the dialog could use some cleaning
> up. These are personal opinions, of course:
>
> - Caption should be in title case / proper case / camel caps /
> whatever. ALong the lines of "Set the Home Page Location"
> - too much space above the "Dropping a link on the Home..."
> - It asks "Do you want to continue?", but the choices are OK and
> Cancel. The choices should be Yes and No, shouldn't they?
> - "...will make it your Home page" -- I wouldn't capitalize the 'H' in
> "Home".
>
> --
> Dean Tessman
>
> (remove "spamfree!." to reply by mail)
Dean Tessman
>
> As for the layout of the dialog, it sucks. commonDialog.xul/js needs a
> smack to the head, which I'll probably get around to doing after PR2.
Yeah, I noticed this on another dialog after I made these comments.
Looks like a problem that affects all dialogs, not just this one.
Dean
jesus X
>
> Thanks for the suggestions. I'll change the caption line text. I can't
> remember if I can easily control the OK cancel text from
> nsICommonDialogs::ConfirmCheck, I'll look and see.
Even if you can, you could just reword the question. "Click OK to continue"
should be fine.
--
jesus X
email [ jesusx @ who.net ]
web [ http://www.bluephone.net/ ]
tag [ The Universe: It's everywhere you want to be. ]
Henri Sivonen
<dean_tessman@spamfree!.hotmail.com> wrote:
> - It asks "Do you want to continue?", but the choices are OK and
> Cancel. The choices should be Yes and No, shouldn't they?
Should be "Set New Location" and "Cancel".
--
Henri Sivonen
hen...@clinet.fi
http://www.clinet.fi/~henris/
Ben Goodger
Folks, please file bugs on all alert dialogs that are not showing
meaningful text. Most JS is simply calling alert() which is feeble, they
should be calling nsICommonDialogs::UniversalDialog() with parameters to
get the appropriate text. A list of dialogs to fix would be handy. I may
write a JS wrapper class for nsICommonDialogs tonight to make this
conversion simpler.
jesus X
>
> it'd help if I attached the shot...
More reliable than telepathy.
> Ben Goodger wrote:
> >
> > This is what I've done (attached)
Beautiful. How can anyone argue with this now?
--
jesus X [ Booze-fueled paragon of pointless cruelty and wanton sadism. ]
email [ jesusx @ who.net ]
web [ http://www.bluephone.net/ ]
tag [ The Universe: It's everywhere you want to be. ]
warning [ Perverted Milkmen know where you live. ]
Neil Hodgson
>
> Beautiful. How can anyone argue with this now?
I will.
There are too many words to read, reducing the chance that they will be
read.
My version:
Do you want to change your home page to "www.mozilla.org"?
[ Change Home Page ] [ Cancel ]
Neil
Klein Duijmpje
>
> it'd help if I attached the shot...
>
> >
> > This is what I've done (attached)
>
> [Image]
Is it looking good or what! :-)
KD
Chris Nelson
-- that a link was dragged onto the Home button. The reason is that this
behavior is not necessarily discoverable, and in many cases might be triggered
accidentally when someone is dragging a link to another location.
I think the dialog is fine.
--chris
Neil Hodgson wrote:
> > > > This is what I've done (attached)
> >
Sjoerd Visscher
Only a line-break before "Do you want to continue" would help the
readability.
Sjoerd
"Chris Nelson" <sut...@bellatlantic.net> wrote in message
news:3938CC11...@bellatlantic.net...
Robert Kaiser
Wow, looking _really_ good!
Would be nice to see the URL it actually wants to set as home page in the
dialog, though...
fantasai
| know what I can D&D something onto. Perhaps when I begin to drag a
| bookmark (or proxy or whatever you call 'em) the targets (eg the
| bookmark sidebar, the personal toolbar, all text windows, the
| addressbook icon, the composer icon etc.) can light-up somehow. I'm
| away the fun and mystery of D&D.
I think it would be easier to light up the cursor.
King's Quest VII does this, and it makes it much easier to solve puzzles
(it's a game) because you know where there's a puzzle to solve.
Matthew Thomas
>
> Furthermore, I've added a warning prompt. Mike Judge made this case to
> me for it:
>
> The result of changing the homepage location accidentally is not
> immediately obvious, and dragging links into this area may be
> something people do frequently as part of adding and sorting
> bookmarks.
(1) The Home button should get a blue* border around it as you drag the
proxy icon over the top of it, the same as any drag-and-drop
operation. Is this happening? (I can't tell, Mozilla builds haven't
been working for me lately because of bug 36928.)
(2) This, ladies and gentlemen, is another reason Home should be in the
main toolbar, and not in the Bookmarks Toolbar.
But yes, it probably should still have a dialog. It's something (like
deleting a mail folder) which causes loss of data if you do it
inadvertently, and (like deleting a mail folder) for the vast majority
of users changing the home page won't be something they do often enough
for a warning dialog to be annoying.
* or whatever color the platform selection color (Windows) or
variation color (Mac OS) happens to be set to at the time
Matthew Thomas
>
> it'd help if I attached the shot...
Go vote for `Help prevent "oops, forgot the attachment! :-)" messages'
<http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35601>.
> Ben Goodger wrote:
> >
> > This is what I've done (attached)
>
> +-------------------------------------------------------------+
> |Set the Home Page location :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::[X]|
> +-------------------------------------------------------------+
> | /\\ Dropping a link on the Home button will make it your |
> | ||| Home Page. Do you want to continue? |
> | |
> | [ ] Don't ask me this again |
> | |
> | [[ Set New Location ]] [ Cancel ] |
> +-------------------------------------------------------------+
A few suggestions:
* `Set the Home Page location' is unnecessarily wordy (and `location'
shouldn't have a small `l' anyway). --> `Set Home Page'.
* This dialog, like most dialogs, should not have a Close box.
* `Dropping a link on the Home button will make it your Home Page.' If
this isn't the first time I've done this, but I've chosen still to
have a dialog (to prevent accidents), then I know this already. If I'm
used to drag-and-drop, I know what the drag-and-drop does the moment
the border appears around the Home button while I'm dragging, and
telling me what I already know is patronizing here too.
Yes, this feature is incredibly cool, but we don't need to show off.
* `Home Page' shouldn't be capitalized in the dialog text.
* The dialog should tell me exactly what it is that I've dragged to the
Home button -- both by URL, and by `"TITLE"' (if known) or `this
document' if not.
* It's unclear exactly what `Do you want to continue?' means -- it
almost implies that setting the home page is a fait accompli, and the
choice now is between continuing (with new home page set) and quitting
Mozilla.
* Turning on a checkbox is a positive action. Therefore, checkboxes
should always have positive text, not negative text like `Don't'. -->
`[*] Always check when I drag a page to the Home button'. (This, by
the way, is our subtle way of telling the user why the dialog has
appeared, without insulting them if they already know.)
* If there is a checkbox so I can turn a dialog off, in the dialog
itself, there MUST always be a checkbox somewhere else so I can turn
it back on again (in case I turned it off by accident, or in case I
change my mind later), and the dialog SHOULD tell me where that other
checkbox is. In this case, it would be in the Navigator category of
the Preferences dialog.
* `Set New Location' is unnecessarily ambiguous.
Thus ... when the TITLE is known:
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
|Set Home Page :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::|
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| /\\ Do you want `Mozilla Design Preview' |
| ||| <http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~rgoodger/> to be your |
| new home page? |
| |
| [*] Always check when I drag an address to the Home |
| button (This can also be set in the `Navigator' |
| category of Preferences) |
| |
| [[ Set Home Page ]] [ Cancel ] |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
And when the TITLE is not known:
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
|Set Home Page :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::|
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| /\\ Do you want this address |
| ||| <http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~rgoodger/> to be your |
| new home page? |
| |
| [*] Always check when I drag an address to the Home |
| button (This can also be set in the `Navigator' |
| category of Preferences) |
| |
| [[ Set Home Page ]] [ Cancel ] |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
Chris Nelson
Matthew Thomas wrote:
> Ben Goodger wrote:
> >
> > Furthermore, I've added a warning prompt. Mike Judge made this case to
> > me for it:
> >
> > The result of changing the homepage location accidentally is not
> > immediately obvious, and dragging links into this area may be
> > something people do frequently as part of adding and sorting
> > bookmarks.
> >...
>
> (1) The Home button should get a blue* border around it as you drag the
> proxy icon over the top of it, the same as any drag-and-drop
> operation. Is this happening? (I can't tell, Mozilla builds haven't
> been working for me lately because of bug 36928.)
>
> (2) This, ladies and gentlemen, is another reason Home should be in the
> main toolbar, and not in the Bookmarks Toolbar.
I disagree. There is no other dragging behavior *onto* the nav-bar buttons
(rarely even onto the nav-bar at all), but there frequently is *onto* the
personal toolbar. It seems a logical extension to have the home button on
the personal toolbar instead, especially when it's 1) a bookmark, 2) behaves
like a hybrid "bookmark"/"bookmark menu", in that it can be clicked, and
urls can be dragged onto it. No other button on the nav-bar exhibits similar
behaviors.
I know that Mozilla's behavior does not equate to 4.x at this point - you
can't yet drag url's onto the personal toolbar. However, this *is* a
behavior that Communicator and IE users are used to. Even though Mozilla
doesn't exhibit the d-n-d behavior in the personal toolbar yet (maybe
never?), I think the ingrained usage patterns would point to having any
d-n-d bookmark behavior on the personal toolbar rather than the nav-bar.
--chris
Ben Goodger
of the things you suggested (document link - which I wanted to
originally also but could not think of an easy way to do) will require
either some tweaks to common dialogs, or a specialised dialog for this
case. As a result I've opened a bug on this issue so that I can tackle
it post nsbeta2:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41518
> * `Set the Home Page location' is unnecessarily wordy (and `location'
> shouldn't have a small `l' anyway). --> `Set Home Page'.
--
done.
> * This dialog, like most dialogs, should not have a Close box.
--
toolkit problem. the convention on Windows seems to be for the box to be
greyed out.
> * Turning on a checkbox is a positive action. Therefore, checkboxes
> should always have positive text, not negative text like `Don't'. -->
> `[*] Always check when I drag a page to the Home button'. (This, by
> the way, is our subtle way of telling the user why the dialog has
> appeared, without insulting them if they already know.)
---
done.
So what I've ended up with (for the moment) is something that looks like
this, if I may be permitted to butcher your ascii artwork ;)
> +-------------------------------------------------------------+
> |Set Home Page :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::|
> +-------------------------------------------------------------+
> | /\\ Do you want this document to be your new home page? |
> | ||| |
> | [*] Always check when I drag an address to the Home |
> | button (This can also be set in the `Navigator' |
> | category of Preferences) |
> | |
> | [[ Set Home Page ]] [ Cancel ] |
> +-------------------------------------------------------------+
I've set the target milestone for the rest to M20. Hopefully I'll be
able to come up with something before then. I want to reimplement
nsICommonDialogs as a javascript component and that might give me the
ability to enhance the interface somewhat with some more useful utility
functions for creating specialised dialogs. It seems that this would be
a fairly generic template:
Text
<document location>
more text
(checkbox)
(buttons)
where document location would be a read-only scrollable field (for
lengthy URLs)
Dean Tessman
Location". But now I'm getting too picky for how often this dialog will
be invoked.
dean
Neil Hodgson wrote:
>
> > > > This is what I've done (attached)
> >
Dean Tessman
>
> > * This dialog, like most dialogs, should not have a Close box.
> --
> toolkit problem. the convention on Windows seems to be for the box to be
> greyed out.
Not at all. In my experiences with 95 and NT4 (no 98 nor 2000), the
Close box is there and active. It's just like canceling out of the
dialog. Some people, I guess, prefer to use the caption buttons. I've
used them a few times, I guess, when my hand was on the mouse not the
keyboard and the pointer was nearer to the Close caption button than the
OK button.
dean
Matthew Thomas
>
> Ben Goodger wrote:
> >
> > > * This dialog, like most dialogs, should not have a Close box.
> > --
> > toolkit problem. the convention on Windows seems to be for the box
> > to be greyed out.
Which is dumb. Having a disabled button clearly implies that there is
some situation where the button will be enabled. In a dialog such as
this one, this is not the case.
> Not at all. In my experiences with 95 and NT4 (no 98 nor 2000), the
> Close box is there and active. It's just like canceling out of the
> dialog.
>...
Maybe so, but I've seen many people use the Close button for two other
purposes, both of which usually cause grief further down the track.
The first is as the `I Don't Know' button, which is dangerous because it
relies on the program to choose the `safest' option. If the user needs
an `I Don't Know' button, there's probably something wrong with the
design of, or text in, the dialog; and a `Help' button would be much
better than a close button in cases where there is really no way to make
the dialog simpler.
And the second deleterious use for the close button is as the `I Can't
Be Bothered Reading This' button, because the user naturally assumes
that the dialog is just another infernal browser popup window. Taking
away the close button is a necessary measure to alert them that that is
not the case.
Simon P. Lucy
isn't a message box but a confirmation dialog. The icon on the dialog box
should emphasise this, ie it should not be the information icon but the
warning icon.
In any event Close == Cancel, Cancelling this operation is in itself
harmless. Dialogs should not use Cancel to do anything except Cancel, there
should be no ill effects of clicking on the Cancel button or the Close box.
Simon