Re: [Usability] HIG dialog layout headache

[Christian Neumair <chris gnome-de org>]

Am Freitag, den 29.10.2004, 16:09 +0100 schrieb Alan Horkan:
> On Fri, 29 Oct 2004, Christian Neumair wrote:
> > I'm currently trying to HIGify the Gnumeric "Paste Special" dialog. I'm
> > totally unconfident with the current layout, but don't know how to
> > resolve the issues in a clean fashion. I've attached a screenshot of my
> > current mockup. The issue seems to be that the dialog has a lot of white
> 
> large amounts of dead space is never a great sign.
> > space and many widgets, which could be resolved by adding comboboxes for
> > the "what to paste" items and the mathematical operations; note that the
> > backdraw of comboboxes is that options are "hidden away" in subwidgets,
> > which Jody doesn't want.
> 

What do you think about the subwidget proposal? Cleaning up the dialog
IMHO always involves reducing the number of visible widgets, i.e.:

Operation: [None|Add|Subtract|Multiply|Divide]

> Presumably you are also going to change OK to "Paste"?

Yes.

> A button Icon for the Paste Link would be nice.

Yes.

> I dont have a recent copy of gnumeric for comparison, will a copy of
> gnumeric 1.2 be recent enough to see what the old Paste Special Dialog
> looked like?

No.

> _All and _Abbrechen have conflicting mnemonics (but Abbrechen == _Close
> so that shouldn't really be an issue).

Yep, "_All" is translated within the Gnumeric gettext package and the
mnemonic is not a.

> In case it might be helpful here is a screenshot of the Excel 2002 Paste
> Special Dialog
> http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~horkana/excel-2002.png
> 
> You could do worse than simply copying it verbatim.
> If in doubt copy, embrace now, extend later.

I completely hate that Microsoft'ish layout (n, m columns / rows for one
group of widgets where n, m >> 0).