There are some old, but still useful references regarding dialog box design issues. A book that never got much publicity is one by Galitz. It has many examples to support principles of dialog box design. The book is not flashy, but it discusses many issues of layout, labeling, interaction, use of controls.
Galitz, W. O. (2002). The essential guide to user interface design: An introduction to GUI design principles and techniques. (Second Edition). New York, NY: Wiley. I just checked and there is a newer Edition, The Essential Guide to User Interface Design: An Introduction to GUI Design Principles and Techniques (Third Edition) (Paperback). 2007. You might want to check out Jeff Johnson's Blooper books which deal with many issues that relate to dialog boxes. GUI Bloopers 2.0: Common User Interface Design Don'ts and Dos (Interactive Technologies) by Jeff Johnson (Paperback - Sep 14, 2007). There is an older book that is now on the web that might be a reference for you. It is the GUI Design Handbook by Susan Fowler and Victor Stanwick. You can find it at: http://www.fast-consulting.com/desktop.htm. It is not based on the Web, but is a good general guide to many GUI basics. Jef Raskin's book The Humane Interface has some interesting views of dialog boxes and other user interface components. Your list of dialog box issues is a good start. Here are a few more to consider: 1. Workflow in the dialog. Some dialog have no clear workflow, but some dialogs have a workflow and you want to have the flow be normal (left to right/top to bottom) and not have the person jumping up and down to perform particular tasks. 2. Labeling consistency. 3. Keyboard access and tab order -- something that is often messed up in Web dialogs. 4. Proper use of widgets 5. Designing for infrequent versus very frequent use. 6. Sizing of dialog. This is an odd issue, but I've seen some GUIs and some WUIs where every dialog is a different size so you might end up with a every dialog being slightly different. 7. The use of the Apply button (and when to have an Apply button). 8. The order and location of command buttons. 9. When to use buttons and when to use links (a common question in Web dialogs). 10. How to deal with subdialogs -- are they simply an extension of the main dialog so things you do in the subdialog are not saved until you click on the main (OK) button. 11. Consistency in layouts across dialogs of similar types. 12. Text in the interface that is used as hint or instructional text. For example, when do you use hint text and how brief can it be. 13. The sensitivity of the layout in the dialog for translation (people often say that text expands 30%, but it is not that simple - short words like Cancel, Submit, and other term will expand, on average, around 200%; sentences tend to expand by about 30% -- the shorter the word, the longer the translated term (going from English to European languages) on average. 14. Consistency with other tools (GUI and Web) that the user might use (this might apply to the order of OK Cancel buttons (OK Cancel for windows versus Cancel OK for Mac). The web site at www.usability.gov has some research-based guidelines though they tend to be focused more on pages than Web dialogs. There is a chapter on the use of widgets that might be useful. Chauncey On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 2:02 PM, Vishal Iyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Is there any literature/research done on dialog boxes on the web? They seem > to be everywhere now, but are often poorly designed. Some of the issues that > popped in my head when I had to design one were- > 1. OS or JS based > 2. Modal or non-modal > 3. Movable or not > 4. Positioning on the page > 5. Transitions > 6. Impact on state of the page > > -- > -Vishal > http://www.vishaliyer.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 > ________________________________________________________________ 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
