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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: misuse/abuse of popup windows - a real-life example
From:       Sébastien_Laoût "\[temporar\]" <les83plus () free ! fr>
Date:       2004-08-31 20:18:51
Message-ID: 1093983482.6326.5.camel () localhost ! localdomain
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Le mar 31/08/2004 à 21:10, Anne-Marie Mahfouf a écrit :
> The question is: how do we alert the user that the letter has already been 
> tried? Maybe highlight the already guessed letter a special way and leave it 
> for a few seconds? The statusbar is a bit crowded to add another label. 
> Another possibility is to do nothing (is it necessary to tell the user that 
> the letter has already been guessed?)
> I am very interested in suggestions here to get rid of that popup :) 
> I do hope this discussion will carry on based on that real-life example and 
> then maybe we can try to write down more generally when these messageboxes 
> are used and how to avoid them.

Some days ago, I replyed to the thread of KHangMan.
Unfortunaly, nobody replyed :'-(      ;)

Here is my reply, and how I suggest to change the GUI:

=====================

Just my few cents:

Le sam 21/08/2004 à 04:47, Anne-Marie Mahfouf a écrit :
> - about popup messages: yes, they are intrusive and the Win Game
dialog can be 
> removed as a setting. You say that those message box (when a letter
has 
> already been guessed) can be replaced by a warning on the document, I
do 
> agree. But where in the document? In the statusbar?  (there are 2
message 
> boxes: one when a letter is entered that has already been guessed and
one 
> when the game is finished) 

Perhapse the interface can be *completly* redesigned and just present a
virtual keyboard to the user (each keys are buttons)...

Then, the user just have to click the buttons to enter letters and the
lineEdit issues are solved (if the letter is accepted by the game as
soon as it is pressed and then dissappear from the lineEdit, it could be
as confusing as needing to press Enter, IMHO).
In this case, those buttons could be checked in red for Missed, or
rounded in green for good chars: the feedback is immediate and at the
position where the cursor/eyes is/are.

*PossibleImplementation: render the character in a pixmap, then apply an
 icon of round/check if needed)
*Question: Should the buttons disabled when clicked?
 If yes, a special QIconSet should be programmed to avoid the icons
 to be shaded when disabled
*Another improvement for non-mouse users can be to add a lineEdit too
 (disabled by default) than check if the letter is valid (ie. not '.',
 '_'...))

And the special characters toolbar could become another row of buttons.
In french toolbar, I only have 'é' and 'è'. I suppose the words to be
guessed only have those special characters, but in the lineEdit, I can
enter 'à' or '@' for example, without feedback this is useless for me
because no word have those letters.

The buttons would solve this problem too (if I could not press a button
'ç', it's because there is no word with this character, which the actual
interface accept and make me loss one letter for nothing. In non-english
languages it's difficult to guess if all special characters are accepted
or not, or if accents should be removed or not (ie. enter 'e' instead of
'é'...)).

> About the Win/Lose dialog: when it is present, it says: You won/are
dead. Do 
> you want to play again? Yes button, No button and No quits the game.
You say 
> this is unexpected. How would I do? Put Yes button and Quit button
instead of 
> No? Isn't that against KDE guidelines? Any other alternative? 

I also thinked to the "Quit" button naming instead of "No" when reading
the report. Could be a great solution.
"New game" | "Quit" seem intuitive and, in a game like KHangMan,
quitting after a short play is a great feature (eg. if you have a pause
time, you play a game and that's all: you go back to working).
I think all games should present this dialog (for the above reason).

Sincerly,

Sébastien Laoût.

=====================

With those buttons, the user move the mouse to one letter/button, so her
eyes follow the cursor: they see the button is checked or rounded, so
they willn't click.
Hey: feedback BEFORE any user action. What a paradise 8-)
And the buttons can be disabled, so (if the user use plastik theme or
one with effects similar) when he pause the mouse over the button he
doesn't see the two bottom and top blues lines in the button: he know it
is disabled, he tried it.


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