On Tue, 17 Apr 2001, Allan Rae wrote:
> Sure. Not everyone reads the "This buffer is readonly -- you can't change
> stuff" dialog. But you are right though.
I'm not sure what you're referring to here ? Sorry, I am forgetful.
> > FWIW, the KDE frontend was managing just fine without an explicit controller.
> > I am perfectly happy for each frontend to NOT use a button controller at all.
>
> As am I.
OK
> How complex a dialog do people want? If you follow the KISS principle you
> get simple elegent designs.
I agree, but these designs don't just fall out from thinking KISS ;)
> > In 90% of cases this is a terrible idea. The user should be able to
> > see roughly what a dialog can do when they first see it, *without* having
> > to mess around with the widgets. One commone exception is tabbed dialogs,
> > and as I'm sure you know they are awfully overused anyway.
>
> Gotta put all those configuration items somewhere the screen isn't big
> enough for one dialog and having multiple dialogs that you blaze a trail
> through like W2k networking config is a bigger pain than tabs IMO.
If that's a wizard, then wizards are *great* ideas, given one BIG proviso -
each step MUST be sequential. I'm not familiar with the networking config but
it sounds very wrong.
A (good) alternative to tabbed dialogs for very busy dialogs like preferences
is the split pane approach used by KDE and Gnome configs. The left hand side
can be either icons+names or a treelist. This partitions each screen very well.
If its possible with xforms, it would be a great idea, perhaps if you goad me a little
I might even have a go ;)
> Anyway, we need to try setting shortcuts for the tab folders in XForms --
> this should be doable but may need to be done manually because they are
> available in the data structures.
yes good idea.
> > so it can go back to an ad-hoc per-frontend approach. That's fine by me...
>
> Did it ever leave there?
apparently not, it seems I was misunderstanding the intention of your new design.
thanks
john
--
"You're just a little girl with blue eyes
With a hole in your heart..."
- Pulp
