Philippe Lhoste wrote:
Robert Roessler wrote:
...
I seriously disagree whether the intent (or best practice) here is to
display *nothing* for a selection in an inactive window/pane...
*dimming* (or other less attention-getting effect), OTOH, makes quite
a lot of sense for just the *reasons* used above.
And this "de-emphasis" is precisely what apps (Microsoft and
third-party) do on both XP and Vista (I just checked Vista to make
sure)... but the selection [area] is still clearly visible and
distinguishable from the backgrounds.
You are partially right...
Perhaps this behaviour date back from Win98/WinNT4 times, I don't know,
but it always seemed natural and, perhaps by force of habit, I am
annoyed when an application that as not the focus shows selection in
default mode.
Indeed, in a number of applications in XP Pro SP2 which I am testing
right now, including Mozilla programs, the selection goes from black (in
my settings) to grey.
Now, it depends on controls: plain combo boxes/edit controls hide the
selection when loosing focus, although Notepad shows it in black, and so
is Wordpad.
List boxes keep the selection black while list views and tree views
(Windows Explorer, HTML Help...) grey it out.
Internet Explorer (and HTML Help) hides the selection...
As you see, the behaviour seems not universal, and seems to depend on
age of control and whim of designer...
Now, come to think of it, greying out the selection doesn't seem like a
bad thing to do... Keeping it black is really disturbing, on the other
hand.
I do *not* talk about "black" or "grey" (or any specific color)...
I do talk about "dimming" or "de-emphasizing" as being the correct and
expected (in terms of the "principle of least surprise") thing to do
when a window or pane is no longer active but we still want the user
to easily see what *was* selected (if anything).
BTW, it is an option with some Windows controls to maintain an
indication of selection status when inactive or not.
Does this make me more than "partially" right? ;)
Robert Roessler
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.rftp.com
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