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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Enhancement: disable reason
From:       Thomas Zander <zander () kde ! org>
Date:       2005-07-06 18:28:43
Message-ID: 200507062028.44502.zander () kde ! org
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On Wednesday 6 July 2005 14:35, Gustavo Sverzut Barbieri wrote:
> > In most cases the layout of the dialog should provide enough
> > information. e.g. Indented under or behind the activating checkbox
> > etc. I don't think that for the very few cases where aditional
> > infomation is necessary would check for a tooltip. Remember, there is
> > no such information for most disabled widgets.
> >
> > Imho we need some allways visible representation to show that there
> > is more.
>
> Some widgets are impossible to do this, like menu items. Open a complex
> software (kwrite, OOo) and you'll see this problem.

I still think the answer Michael gave counts there.  Correct ordering and 
good visual feedback at other positions will help the user.
For example to place KWords frame options in a Frame menu, and if there is 
no frame selected then all items in the menu are unavailable.  This seems 
discoverable enough IMO.

But even more important, developers that don't have the UI-expertise, or, 
more often, time to order or name items so its more usable sure don't 
have the time or know-how to create good messages for the structure you 
propose.
In short; the technology might be great but it moves the work to actually 
solve the issue back to the people that missed the opportunity to do so 
before.  What makes you think they will do it now?


Proper usability review of applications, their dialogs and, very import, 
their menu systems will cause a lot of the cases to go away.  Perhaps 
enough of them to make this a non-issue.
- -- 
Thomas Zander
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