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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Enhancement: disable reason
From:       Thomas Zander <zander () kde ! org>
Date:       2005-07-06 18:00:28
Message-ID: 200507062000.35697.zander () kde ! org
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On Wednesday 6 July 2005 19:25, Tim Hutt wrote:
> > Buttons should never be shown if the user can't enable them
>
> Says you.
>
> I wish people would stop talking about UI's with unsupported 'facts'.

See below for the supported fact.

> If KDE supports Sleeping but I can't use it for some reason then I want
> to see a disabled 'Sleep' button! Then at least I know it isn't KDE's
> fault that Sleep doesn't work, but something else (permissions, kernel
> config etc).
>
> Otherwise I might get confused and spend ages looking for where the
> sleep option is.

I wish people would stop talking about usability based on their personal 
feelings and say it like its something everyone will naturally share 
their opinion on.

Now; if we may get back to being realistic and actually based on rational 
rather then on personal feelings, I'm more then willing to give you a 
rational. I actually already did, see first line of this email, but you 
apparently rejected it. :)

I did a usability research for an application we did. This was about 2 
years ago.  This was an internal program for clients of a company I 
worked for, so you'll have to trust me being actually truthful about my 
research here.  No visible reports.
There was one button that was requested by the PR people since it would be 
a new 'upcoming' feature. But it didn't really do anything, so we 
disabled it.
The results were overwhelming; the majority of users were not reading the 
text explaining the upcoming feature and thus never made the conclusion 
it was never going to be clickable.  They just looked for ways to enable 
it.  Which nobody found, naturally. (see, people really don't read long 
texts).
ps. We removed the button and did a tab with a long PR text and a graphic 
on it in the final version.

Considering all this, and various details which I'm not going to type in 
here, buttons that can't be enabled (in the same piece of software) 
should not be visible.
- -- 
Thomas Zander
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