> If you look at the developer guidelines, it is fine to
> remove a control when it is not needed.

<opinion>
Yikes, that's one that I'd have a tough time agreeing with.  Depends on the
situation, to be sure.  For the most general case, imagine yourself as a
user wondering how to do something, and looking for the proper
control/command/option.  If you simply can't find it, there is no indication
of that functionality being present - but you do something and magically
controls appear to do what you wanted.  Being a fan of the "path of least
surprise" (e.g. Software should do that which surprises the user the least)
I'd opt for giving the user some form of clue that the functionality is
there, but is unavailable.  Thus the decision to keep the control, but pop
up an alert specifying why the button won't work.
</opinion>

Then again, I'm reasonably known for tidily efficient but hideously ugly
interfaces, so go figure. ;-)

  -P

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