Re: Display dialog frontmost?
Re: Display dialog frontmost?
- Subject: Re: Display dialog frontmost?
- From: Christopher Nebel <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 16:43:29 -0700
On Friday, September 13, 2002, at 12:08 PM, Michael Sullivan wrote:
I have a huge rant ready on "human interface guidelines" that don't
take into account the fact that different programs tend to generate
different user expectations ... [W]hen feasible, I never want to
depend on some monolithic human interface guideline to determine a
script's behavior, and IMO, a very cold and nasty place in hell is
reserved for programmers who believe that forcing the user to deal
with their concept of a "good human interface" is the way to work.
<Sigh.> The Apple/Aqua Human Interface Guidelines are not laws, they
are not commandments -- they are guidelines. They exist for the
purpose of promoting consistent and reasonable (for some definition of
"reasonable") behavior in the majority of cases.
Like any other set of guidelines, they assume a certain amount of
judgment on the part of the reader as to when they are really
applicable. If you don't have any particular reason to break them,
then you should follow them, because your application will then be
consistent with most other applications, and users won't be
unnecessarily surprised.
However, if your application is exceptional in some way -- that is, a
majority of your users expect it to behave in some way that's not like
the guidelines, but that's how they prefer it -- then go ahead and bend
or break the guidelines. If it's a 50/50 split, go ahead and have a
preference [1]. There are lots of cases like this. I used to work on
a CAD application, and we added an option for drawing without ever
dragging the mouse -- which violates the mouse usage guideline --
because a lot of users were coming over from AutoCAD, and that's just
how they did things.
In short: be aware of the guidelines, follow them when it's
appropriate, don't when it's not, and consider your audience.
--Chris Nebel
AppleScript Engineering
[1] However, keep options under control -- see chapter 3 of Joel
Spolsky's excellent "User Interface Design for Programmers"
(<
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000247.html>). In
fact, just read the whole thing.
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