Re: [Usability] UI design question

[Jacob Beauregard <jake13jake comcast net>]

Well, I could give some suggestions, as personally I'd get rid of a 
dialog completely because all of these options could be easily compacted 
into something just as simple.

The importing of a theme could probably be done from the theme editor 
window, and "Save As..." is typically used to take care of the potential 
problems of overwriting.

Open could be a button/dropdown combo (like the back/forward buttons in 
firefox) on the toolbar that contains:

Current Theme
--Separator--
Last N themes edited
Other...

If you're going to stick with the dialog, which I'd expect you to do for 
the time being if you've already put in a lot of work, you're on the 
right track in regard to how you should do that. What you could do is 
separate the two options on which the dropdown menu is dependent on from 
the rest of the group in some sense and have the drop down menu, grouped 
with them, greyed out unless either of those radio buttons are selected. 
Someone else might have a better idea though.

Dave Foster wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm crossposting to both the usability list and gtk app devel list, i 
> hope this is ok, as I couldn't really see where my question fit in.  I 
> am designing a gtk application and I'm trying to follow the HIG, and I 
> wanted to get some opinions on a "simple" dialog in the application.  
> Here is a description (chopped out of an email i sent to a friend 
> earlier):
>
> I've come up with 5 distinct actions this dialog should have.  The 
> actions are as follows:
> - Create a new theme
> - Create a new theme based on an existing theme
> - Open an existing theme
> - Edit current theme
> - Open last edited theme
>
> (the last two items will have text inserted at run time to explain 
> what those theme names are)
>
> I thought the best way to do this was a radio button group, as it 
> would show all the available actions neatly on one screen.  The 
> problem is, there is additional information that needs to be taken in 
> depending on what is selected.  For the top two items (both creates), 
> a theme name must be given in a text box.  For the create new based on 
> existing and open existing, a theme needs to be selected from a list 
> of themes.
>
> Because of these additional controls, I don't know how to lay this 
> dialog out so that the user can see that the listbox and textbox are 
> dependant on selections in the radio group.
>
> Another idea is to use a drop down, which could be put above the 
> textbox/listbox, and have those go sensitive/insensitive as 
> appropriate, but i feel that masks the user from seeing the 
> possibilities of opening/creating themes.
>
> Yet one more idea is to use a multiple screen approach, with simple 
> buttons that have nice icons that indiciate which action to take, and 
> have a second dialog then ask for the required information such as a 
> name or existing theme, but i feel multiple screens is a bit wizardy 
> and not needed.
>
> Any thoughts?  thanks all.
> dave
>
>
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