On Sep 10, 2006, at 10:34 AM, Rodney Dawes wrote: > > On Sat, 2006-09-09 at 11:49 -0600, Elijah Newren wrote: >> >> On 9/8/06, Olaf van der Spek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > ... >>> The HIG says (implicitly) dialogs shouldn't have a maximize button. >>> >>> http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/windows-dialog.html > ... >> Also worth noting is http://live.gnome.org/Metacity/WindowTypes, which >> is mpt's work to try to extend the list of window types and provide >> better visual clues about each window.
(I suck for not having finished that page by now.) >>> Can this be fixed such that dialogs can have a maximize button? >>> Even better, can maximize buttons be automatically added to every >>> window that is resizable? (For the past few months I've been experimenting with having no maximize buttons at all. So far, so good.:-) >> Given that both the HIG and mpt's extensions/modifications suggest no >> maximize button for such windows, it is possible that we should turn >> this question around: should we disable resizing for window types that >> shouldn't have a maximize button? Neither the HIG nor mpt's write-up >> addresses that question, and it seems some users are confused by the >> ability to resize if the window can't be maximized. > > If one automatically disables resizing of windows, may hellfire fall > upon his skull. There are many MANY dialogs that have scrollable > content inside them. That is true. Some dialogs should be resizable, and some non-dialog windows should not be. You can't determine resizability by window type. <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg02436.html> > Some of the content useful for more advanced users it outside the > default visible area, and can be scrolled to. I don't think I've ever seen a window like that. Can you give an example? > Resizing the window to make this content viewable makes the dialog > much more useful for those users. In reality, there should be > absolutely NO windows on the desktop, which cannot be resized. > ... At one level, this is already true: you can use a window manager that forces every window to be resizable. But that doesn't mean it's a good idea for the majority of people. Alerts are the obvious example: nobody benefits from having an alert that can be made larger than needed to show all its text, while some people benefit from alerts having an instantly recognizable size. > I guess it's a problem that dialogs currently aren't iconifiable > either. Is this a metacity or GTK+ bug though? > ... A dialog should minimize automatically when you minimize its parent window. If minimizing it without minimizing its parent window is appropriate, it shouldn't be a dialog. -- Matthew Paul Thomas http://mpt.net.nz/ _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
