Re: Hiding a control on MacOS10.2
Re: Hiding a control on MacOS10.2
- Subject: Re: Hiding a control on MacOS10.2
- From: John Stiles <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2005 08:53:42 -0700
Oh, let's not go there.
There are lots of perfectly legitimate reasons to hide a control. In
my case, I was writing an app which let you install our games. There
was a dialog which, depending on which game you're installing, would
either ask you for:
- your name
- your name and a CD-key
- your name and two CD-keys
Now, what should I do? Build three identical dialogs and then make
minor changes to each one? Then write all the glue code to shuffle
between these three dialogs? Talk about a hassle! It's much better to
make one dialog with all the necessary controls, and programatically
hide the ones that don't apply for the current product.
I had another program; it displays a dialog that, depending on the
product that you owned, would show:
- a message and 'OK'
- a message, 1 checkbox, and 'OK'
- a message, 2 checkboxes, and 'OK'
- etc etc, up to 4 or 5 checkboxes.
Once again, hiding made way more sense than any of the other options.
I don't understand why every time control hiding comes up, somebody
always assumes that there's no need for hide/show. If you think about
it for a minute, of course that's not true. Particularly in this day
and age, when so many little utility apps are meant to be repurposed
again and again, there are plenty of reasons to do it.
On Jul 31, 2005, at 6:16 AM, Erik Buck wrote:
One solution for hiding controls is not to do it.
Please see past discussions:
http://www.cocoabuilder.com/archive/message/2001/11/18/16874
http://www.cocoabuilder.com/archive/message/cocoa/2001/11/18/16879
http://www.cocoabuilder.com/archive/message/2001/11/19/16852
http://www.cocoabuilder.com/archive/message/cocoa/2004/9/20/117870
In summary:
Tab Views, Drawers, Info-Window pages, disclosure triangles
attached to
expanding/contracting windows, and probably other UI elements are
all ways
of hiding user interface elements. However, all of these ways
indicate that
more UI is available and how to see it. Tab views show the user
how many
tabs are available and the user can cycle through the tabs at any
time to
see their contents. There is usually a way for the user to open a
drawer
and see its contents.
Having a button or text field suddenly appear where there was none
before is
probably going to surprise users. There is no indication to a user
that a
hidden control exists. There is no indication to the user how to
make the
control visible or invisible. A user who remembers the existence of
the
control may be come frustrated when she can not find the control later
because it is hidden and the reason for its being hidden is not
obvious.
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