> >How about modal forms located at 0,0 with extents 160,160? It's wrong and > >it looks bad (this is what causes forms to have tiny dots in the corners). > >A full-screen modal form should be located at 2,2 with extents 156,156. > >It's a small cosmetic thing, but to me it indicates the author is not aware > >of some pretty basic things, and that makes me wonder what else is broken, > >so I prefer to avoid using such apps. > > > > As someone who often uses full screen modal forms, I consider the 'dot' > issue a minor OS bug. The OS should be smart enough to recognize > 160x160 modal forms and not draw these annoying dots in the corners. > > But you should not look down on programmers who use full screen > modal forms! It is, in my humble opinion, a perfectly valid technique.
If an app considers it a valid technique, then I would expect the app to at least employ a workaround to make the forms look nice. For example, it's easy enough to clear the corners. Otherwise I wonder, did the author not notice, or did the author not care? I'm not so comfortable with either. Please don't take it personally that I like to look out for the "health" of my device. I've noticed a statistical correlation between "full screen modal forms" (something the OS explicitly does not support, btw -- "doesn't disallow" does not imply "supports") and newbie mistakes like using globals inside sysAppLaunchCmdSyncNotify or sysAppLaunchCmdSystemReset, or worse not realizing about launch codes at all. ;-) If it will help you understand where I'm coming from, please think of my choice to avoid apps which put the modal form frame offscreen as a little "security blanket" of mine. I don't mean to question your skills -- you may be a rock solid seasoned coder who like the majority of coders is more concerned with functionality than looks -- in that case it's my loss, but I enjoy the safety that I've found from this statistical observation. But anyway, the original point was that the UI looks bad, and the developer didn't do anything about it. It sounds like you agree the dots look bad, so if you wouldn't mind, could you say why it is that you don't do anything about them? -- For information on using the Palm Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/forums/
