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From: klute%trillian.irb@unido.uucp (Rainer Klute)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Designing HIs under GEM
Message-ID: <1571@laura.UUCP>
Date: 26 Aug 89 14:10:44 GMT
References: <11830048@hpldola.HP.COM>
Sender: news@laura.UUCP
Reply-To: klute@trillian.irb.informatik.uni-dortmund.de (Rainer Klute)
Organization: University of Dortmund, W-Germany
Lines: 42
Work-Address: Postfach 500500, D-4600 Dortmund 50, Tel. +49 231 755-4663
Home-Address: Vinckeplatz 5,   D-4600 Dortmund 1,  Tel. +49 231 128414

In article <11830048@hpldola.HP.COM> jg@hpldola.HP.COM (Joe Gilray) writes:
>2) I also tend to use nested dialogs quite a bit.  I like to keep the
>   amount of information on a given dialog limited (this can also be
>   helpful in making a dialog multipurpose, i.e. useable in many
>   different parts of an application).  Do you think that nested
>   dialogs are too hard to use?  I know that they can be harder to
>   write as you often have to allow the user to move up and down
>   through the levels of dialog hierarchy and may have to offer
>   the same function in several different boxes (i.e. Abort,
>   finished, etc).

The amount of information displayed in a dialog box is limited
by the maximum size of the dialog box itself: the screen size.
This should not be too much for the user to survey provided:

a) a normal monitor is used (like the SM124, not those 19'' ones),

b) the small font is not used (extensivly),

c) the dialog box itself is well structured and clear,

d) buttons etc. carry a good description of what they stand
   for, no acronyms.

Nested dialogs have the disadvantage that you see only a part
of the underlying dialog box(es) and so you do not have the
full information at hand. Personally I try to avoid them as
long as the dialog box fullfills the above mentioned conditions.

However, in my new version of Arcgsh (coming in a few weeks on
comp.binaries.atari.st) I had some problems with a dialog box
which takes the parameters for Zoo. Well, Zoo parameters are
that complex that they simply do not fit into a dialog box of
(nearly) screen size. So I took the text edit fields for
filename parameters out and "swapped" them to an extra dialog
box which shows up when the user clicks a button named
"Filenames..." in the main dialog box.

  Rainer Klute           ----    klute@trillian.irb.informatik.uni-dortmund.de
  Univ. Dortmund, IRB    |)|/    klute@unido.uucp, klute@unido.bitnet
  Postfach 500500        |\|\    ...uunet!mcvax!unido!klute
D-4600 Dortmund 50       ----    Tel.: +49 231 7554663