"Luke Paireepinart" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote >> Its easier for the programmer but much worse for the user. >> We should always catch erroneous input as early as possible. > > The difference between a webpage and an application here is that if > the > user enters something incorrectly, he'll know as soon as he tries to > submit it, without having to wait for the page to reload,
Only a few seconds difference, he's still done all the work of filling in 10 or more fields and now has to back to look for the error. > That's why I just purchased 'The Essential Guide To User Interface > Design' from Half-Price Books! I haven't seen that one, but I do like Abbout Face by Cooper - the guy who wrote the first version of Visual Basic before MS bought it. > but it's also annoying to have something restrict your input. But if the input is wronmg better to get it right first time rather than have the same error flagged to you after you've stopped thinking about that bit of data. > and I get some kind of visual warning that my entry is incorrect. > NOT a dialog box, I hope, but some kind of red warning label next to > the > entry widget or something. I agree, dialogs are a pain for this. But as I understand it (without having used it!) PMW actually does give a visual indication by changing the colour of the field to indicate an error rather than a dialog.. Also the validator is called on each keystroke *as well as* when it loses focus. > Basically I don't want to see an entry box that behaves differently > than > a normal entry box (only accepts integers, for example). But there are quite a few like that in Windows. Several of the config tools regulate input. Think if the entry fields for inputting an IP address.They autommatically jump to the next box after 3 digits, and they won't let you enter a number above 255. Similarly password entries are diffeerent to normal because they show up asstars or blobs or sometimes as nothing at all (I don't like those even though they are more secure!) Alan G. _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
