Re: Message Boxes / 5:3 Ratio

[Calum Benson <calum benson ireland sun com>]

Vlad Harchev wrote:

> > And would there also be a control center option for what every other
> > type of application should do when it starts up?  Web browsers, mail
> > clients, MP3 players, even the control center itself?  This would soon
> > get out of hand, I think...
> 
>   Yes, that's my idea of configurable software. User just doesn't have to
> configure every software package - only mostly used ones if s/he is
> uncomforatble with something.

But if they're only configuring individual applications in this way, why
not make the configuration in that application, rather than forcing them
to look somewhere else other than the window they're working in and
cluttering up the control center with even more controls in the process?
 
>   The most important thing is default directory to open files from or to save
> files to for a given application. Properly designed file selector widget could
> hide everything from programmer.

Very true, but again, to me default load/save directories are an
application-level configuration, not a control center configuration as I
think you were suggesting.

> Once we have the code for that logic only in one place, we can do whatever 
> we want with it - decide what the default should be, write (or not write) 
> means for configuring things, etc.

I agree with that, that's just good software design :)  Putting
everything you can think of in the control center is not, however...

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems