On 09/14/03 2:09 PM, "Mickey Stevens" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 9/14/03 3:21 AM, "Julian Vrieslander" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> Note that Entourage is not consistent about this matter. If I open a new >> outgoing email message window, I can start typing an address, change my >> mind, erase the address, and close the window without creating a draft >> message. If I leave message text in the window and hit the close box before >> sending, a dialog appears asking me if I want to save. I can choose "Don't >> Save" if I desire. This is the way it should be throughout Entourage, and >> it is a behavior familiar to Mac users. > > Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but this happens with Calendar events > too. If I open a new calendar event, and then press the close button > without saving, I get a dialog that says: "Do you want to save your changes > to this Calendar Event? Don't Save/Cancel/Save". You can just press the > "Don't Save" button, and Entourage will close the window and not save the > event. That's identical to how mail windows behave. OK, I found out the cause of this discrepancy. Sometime in the past, I had apparently checked the "Always save changes without asking" checkbox, in the Don't Save/Cancel/Save dialog for Calendar events. I used Entourage > General Preferences > Notification > Reset Confirmation Dialogs to cancel that behavior. This illustrates one of the tradeoffs that developers have to deal with. MS applications tend to have a lot of preference options that enable a user to customize specific features of the UI. But all those options add complexity. People who support the program have to contend with more configurations and behaviors. Users need to understand (and remember!) how these options interact with each other, etc. I can cite examples where MS handled this tradeoff well (Entourage Preview Pane, HTML/plain text options), and where they handled it badly (Entourage "View Columns", Word "auto-everything" options enabled by default). When I design my own programs, I like to implement the simplest possible UI, with elements and layouts that Mac users recognize immediately. This minimizes confusion, and reduces the need for documentation and support. But my projects are not made for a commercial market. Feature-bloat sells product in a competitive marketplace, even if it causes headaches later. -- Julian Vrieslander <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- To unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> archives: <http://www.mail-archive.com/entourage-talk%40lists.letterrip.com/> old-archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/entourage-talk%40lists.boingo.com/>
