Subject: Modeless Dialogs (was Re: A Proposal (why we should have setBold(true)))
From: sam th (sam@bur-jud-118-039.rh.uchicago.edu)
Date: Wed May 31 2000 - 21:44:47 CDT
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On Wed, 31 May 2000, Eric W. Sink wrote:
> I'm curious -- which dialogs *should* be modeless?
>
Any dialog where you might want to type while keeping the dialog open.
The poster child for modeless dialogs is insert symbol, which is
practically useless without it. You just keep insert symbol off to the
side, and add strange characters when you need them, without having to
reopen and reclose the dialog repeatedly.
Other dialogs that really should be modeless:
Find/Replace
Spellcheck
Goto
You shouldn't have to close these in order to type.
Additonally, all of these dialogs are modeless in WP for Unix (the only
comparison I have lying around.)
> Am I the only one who believes that lots of dialogs still deserve
> to be modal?
There are plenty. Besides the obvious (open, save, print)
font
paragraph
options
tabs ( I disagree with Martin here).
You seem less than enthusiastic about modeless dialogs. I don't really
see why. There are certainly lots of cases where they aren't appropriate.
But unless you have a good reason, you shouldn't prevent the user from
doing things while a dialog is open.
And modal dialogs can be *very* evil. Think of all those horrible modal
javascript windows that ask you stupid questions you can't move on without
answering.
sam th
sam@uchicago.edu
http://sam.rh.uchicago.edu
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