Re: The best way to hide views.
Re: The best way to hide views.
- Subject: Re: The best way to hide views.
- From: publiclook <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 20:41:25 -0500
Let me first say that I don't know very much about how things "should"
work, but I am heavily influenced by past discussions of this topic.
The AppKit provides easy to use support for several ways of
de-cluttering or visually simplifying a user interface by hiding and
revealing user interface items under user control. These include the
following:
- Inspectors (Show Info): Finder and Interface Builder
- Split Views (One collapsed by default): Project Builder (hint to
users that there is more available)
- Tab Views: very common and shows users which options are available
- Drawers: very common. These work well in a "more options" scenario
or in situation where there is a master-detail view like Mailboxes and
the main window in Mail.app.
There are lots of situations in which user interface items are disabled
when not applicable. The prime example is menu items. The fact that
the menu items are present even when disabled informs users that they
are sometimes applicable. Buttons and text fields that are not
applicable now can be shown disabled.
There are also lots of examples of user interface items suddenly
appearing or disappearing in Mac OS X. System preferences even mix
modes. You can have a preference that just appears and then has some
disabled controls etc.
I obviously don't know what the right solution is. However, the AppKit
and IB make Inspectors, Split Views, Tab Views, and Drawers, and
automatically enabling/disabling menu items and controls very easy.
Programatically hiding things is hard.
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