On 01/07/10 04:44, Jean Hollis Weber wrote:
Gary Schnabl wrote:
A dialog box (or dialog) differs from a (general) window in that a
dialog box has a focus that must be terminated before the application
can resume. IOW, it ties up the application until it is acted upon.
The Stylist window need not be acted upon and can remain open, if
desired. A dialog box disappears from view (and is essentially
nonexistent) after its use (i.e., its reason to exist) is over.
Hmmm... does that mean the Find & Replace thingy is a "window," not a
"dialog"? Or is it something else again, technically? There are several
others, such as Fields, that can be put to one side of the screen and
used now and then. They look like a dialog but don't tie up the app
until acted upon.
--Jean
The Find and Replace dialog box is a modeless dialog box. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialog_box
Most other dialog boxes are modal, so the user must respond before the
user can continue.
By the way, the Sun Style Guide demands to use the term "dialog box" for
those boxes. In StarOffice (and OpenOffice.org) UI and Help we got an
exemption because of historically reasons. All existing texts referred
to "dialogs" instead of "dialog boxes" and it was seen as too much of an
effort (and translation costs) to change them all.
For a beginners guide it would be nice to have some illustrations of UI
elements, how they look and how they are called. Authors and translators
would benefit, too.
Uwe
--
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