RE: property dialogs

[Paul Hepworth <phepworth s-vision com>]

> Hmm, I can't really grab a good article to respond on, but a few weeks
> earlier, I remember some people have come to the consensus that
> (forgetting how any other system's property dialogs work) the most
> intuitive for the user is that any change is instant, with a way to undo
> these changes.
> 
> If this is still acceptable, this way would need the least buttons: i.e.
> only per-panel Default, Revert (or Undo), and a global Ok, which
> function might be served by window close.  Maybe even a global Cancel,
> or rather Revert, to get rid of all changes.  The only question is that
> should the state of a tab (panel) be preserved when switching tabs?
> Preserving would make a local Revert work even after switching a few,
> but that's not necessarily intuitive.  On the other hand, a global
> revert may be better for "I don't remember what I've done, but I'd
> rather undo all", after that switching..
> 
> This method is also more intuitive in some cases for non-modal dialogs
> (which should be strongly supported, IMHO).
> 
This is the OS/2 way.  It works very well, except that the absence of an
"Ok" button is confusing to new users used to the windoze way.  I think
having a "Close" (in addition to the window-close button on the frame) is
necessary to keep from confusing newbies.
So, we could have all changes "live"
Per-page <default> and optional per-page <undo>
Per-notebook <help> and <close> and optional per-notebook <undo>


Paul