There is some research on whether buttons should be disabled or hidden in Deborah Mayhew's great book Principles and Guidelines in Software User Interface Design. Whether items should be disabled or hidden depending on the frequency of use and expertise and goals of the user. There was research into efficiency versus predictability. One of the issues with messaging for disabled buttons is that with some functions, there might be multiple reasons for disabling the button so any message might have to convey 1 or more reasons for the disabling. There was a controversy in the early days of pop-up menu design about whether a pop-up menu should have any disabled items since the intent of a pop-up menu was to provide only functions that are currently available for a specific context. When disabled items are included in pop-up menus, the menus get longer which is an issue.
The Mayhew books is old (1992), but some of the classic research about many of the common UI questions is still quite applicable. Chauncey On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 2:38 PM, Rich Rogan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I think we're all saying the same thing, (making my ordered list more > organized): > > Optimal solution: > 1. Disable button when functionality is not available, (with messaging). > > Sub-Optimal solutions: > 1. Hide buttons > 2. Leave buttons visually enabled but thru user intervention the user > discovers buttons are actually "disabled". > > (There is consensus on the above Optimal solution, right?) > > > On 7/2/08, Dan Saffer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >> >> On Jul 2, 2008, at 8:42 AM, Rich Rogan wrote: >> >> I'd have to agree with what I believe all this threads comments are >>> pointing >>> to (and add that this is what we're doing in our app, with great user >>> feedback), - it's better to disable a button when this functionality is >>> not >>> available then: >>> >>> 1. Hide it, or >>> 2. Leave it visually enabled but thru user intervention the user discovers >>> it is actually "disabled". >>> >> >> Actually, no. We've been saying we agree with Joel, that #1 is usually bad. >> The best practice we seem to be hovering around is: >> >> Leave the item visible, but visually distinguished as disabled. When >> possible, allow for some means to explain why it is disabled (tooltip, help >> icon). >> >> Dan >> >> > > -- > Joseph Rich Rogan > President UX/UI Inc. > http://www.jrrogan.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
