[thelist] Re: UI Standards

[Tim Luoma]

aardvark wrote:

> most developer shops come up with their own GUI standards (i'm wary
> of those that don't)... MS, for example, has extensive win UI
> standards out there...

yes, including a recommendation to make all of your Alert panels 'yes'
and 'no' and 'cancel'

NeXTSTEP (which I believed followed the Apple UI) had much better UI
guidelines that made contextual suggestions

Compare:
	Do you want to save changes to Document1?

	Yes	No	Cancel

vs
	Unsaved changes in file:

	Cancel	 	Don't Save	Save

Which gives you a much clearer indication of what you are agreeing to,
but would break MS' UI suggestions


Where this really gets fun is when you get convoluted things like:

"The values you have enterered are sub-optimal do you wish to change
them?  If you want to leave them as they are press No."

Yes	No	Cancel


((This is the same logic that gave us the START button to
   logout/powerdown/shutdown.))



As opposed to a much better UI which would state:

"The values appear to be incorrect, what would you like to do:"

Cancel		Enter Different Values		Use Values As Entered


TjL