Xref: utzoo comp.sys.mac:23665 comp.sys.mac.programmer:3416 Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-lcc!unisoft!hoptoad!gnu From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.mac.programmer Subject: Re: List Items Handling... Message-ID: <6001@hoptoad.uucp> Date: 6 Dec 88 07:40:16 GMT References: <7743@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> <6000@hoptoad.uucp> Organization: Grasshopper Group in San Francisco Lines: 33 tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) wrote (talking about dimmed menu items): > There are a few different ways to deal with the selection issue. The > best way is probably never to allow a disabled cell to be selected. I find this one of the worst aspects of the Mac user interface. I can see that you might want to keep things in the list, even though they can't be done right now, so that the size and position of the following items will not change all the time. But this way of handling selection makes it hard or impossible for the user to do things that are easy in a traditional command-based user interface. In most cases when I want to deal with a dimmed item, I want to select it to get something done (e.g. read in a new file) but there is something I have to do first before it will let me do it (e.g. write out the one I already have). In a command based interface I would command it to read in the new file and would get an error message, e.g. "Can't read a new file until you save or dispose of the old one". In a dimmed-menu interface where you can't select the dimmed items, there is no way to find out what it wants me to do before it will "let me" command it to take the action I want done. The solution is simple; you let dimmed items be selected, and if one is selected, you print an error message (display an alert, whatever the Mac calls it) that says what the problem is. Write these messages from the point of view that you are a human who desperately wants to make the computer do the thing that they selected, e.g. they picked this menu item for a reason! Tell them what they need to know about how to do it; don't tell them "you selected a dimmed menu item idiot", tell them "you can't load a file because first you need to quit out of the one you are in -- use the Quit or Save or Save As menu item". -- John Gilmore {sun,pacbell,uunet,pyramid,amdahl}!hoptoad!gnu gnu@toad.com "The network *is* the confuser."