> > Jack, you mention "buttons should enable and disable based on the > > selection". Have you had success with this in the past? I am worried > > about randomly disabling buttons -- what if the user doesn't > > understand > > why it's happening? > > My philosophy is that it would be more confusing to allow them to > press a button that won't work because of the selection. I have also > used tooltips on disabled buttons that indicate why they are disabled.
Oh, absolutely, I agree, better to prevent the error in the first place than to have to explain it after it happens! We actually dismissed both these approaches. Instead, our solution has been to move any "single item actions" down to the "item detail page" only. An example of this is "Edit". Because we can't let people edit two items at the same time, we don't include that option on the List Page. Instead, people click on one item in the list, go to the Item Detail Page, and then click the "Edit" button there. So we have: List Page (list of all items, with buttons allowing the user to perform any actions that can be applied to any combination of items in the list, including multiples) Item Detail Pages (what you get when you click on an item, with all of the same buttons as the list page, PLUS any buttons for actions that you can only perform on one item at a time) I don't know if that explanation makes any sense -- hope so :) Anyway, we're about to test this in a few weeks and I'm quite worried about it. We dismissed your proposed solution in favour of this, so I was just curious how your solution tests. Would love to hear your results after you're done! Thanks, Meredith - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Meredith Noble Information Architect, Usability Matters Inc. 416.598.7770 x6 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.usabilitymatters.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
