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List:       kde-look
Subject:    Re: KMessageBox vs. style guide
From:       "Friedrich W. H. Kossebau" <Friedrich.W.H () Kossebau ! de>
Date:       2000-09-20 18:42:37
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> Let's just eliminate them ! :) It takes some thinking on the part of the
> coder to find ways to stop the user doing things that would cause 'errors',
> but it's worth it. For example, if you are going to drag a file from a
> local konqy file window to an ftp window, you simply shouldn't be able to
> drop if you don't have permission on that particular dir on the ftp site.
> etc, etc.

Sometimes one doesn't know what is possible/allowed and what isn't. So
you try. But if you fail you would like to know why. To take your
example: if I have no clue why I am not allowed to write to that ftp
location I would try and wait for the error message hoping for an
explanation and a hint how to enable this (if it is possible).

So I don't think error or problem messages are bad by nature. It depends
whether they can help you or not. 

Some things seem obvious to do although you are no expert. Thanks to
intuitive design. But because of your no expert being and without having
looked in the handbook as it looks that intuitive you might want to do
things that are no possible. You don't want to stop know and reach for
that handbook but to be teached by try and error. 

Well, may be then the design of that program is not perfect enough or
intuitive enough and there should be concentration on this (like adding
a symbol for writing rights). But this might be a hard task...

---
Typing an url I have in my mind might result in an unknown one. No
chance to prevent this (except perhaps for locale ones where the
possibilities are readable). Taking this as a template I think you can
only prevent things which can be foreseen. But there are more (like my
url typing example) so a total elimination might not be possible...

My 2 cents... 

Friedrich

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