--- Dan Shafer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > [snip] > > Alternative design: Apple's designers should not > disable the checkbox; > rather they should hide the option until and unless > the user makes a > selection from the popup menu that should enable the > user to change the > checkbox setting. Then and only then the checkbox > should appear. This > is part of another key UI design concept: > progressive discovery. Only > show the user as much of the UI as is needed to > accomplish the > immediate objective. Several Claris products 15 > years ago, for which > the UI was designed by one world-class designer, > demonstrated this > brilliantly. Why should I even have to look at the > checkbox and have it > clutter my use of the program if it's not relevant > to my current > situation? No value. No reason for it to be there. >
Hi Dan, The company I work for has been producing accounting/administrative applications for 18 years on Mac and Windows, and we've experimented quite a bit with our interface, both in terms of ease-of-use and of error-avoidance. Now we've settled on a design where the user sees all the fields and option menus and checkboxes, but they're all disabled until the user enters 'Edit' mode by clicking the 'Edit button', then they're enabled until the user clicks the 'Save' or 'Revert' buttons. During edit mode, other buttons such as Previous and Next are disabled. An earlier version would only display fields and buttons when you were in the right mode, but our users found it quite disconcerting that fields warped into option menus and that buttons would suddenly appear and disappear. Maybe it's because they were accountants *grin* but progressive disclosure isn't always the answer. Jan Schenkel. ===== "As we grow older, we grow both wiser and more foolish at the same time." (La Rochefoucauld) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
