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From: jeremyr@cs.qmc.ac.uk (Jeremy Roussak)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Moving a Textedit field in a modal dialog
Message-ID: <1195@sequent.cs.qmc.ac.uk>
Date: 28 Aug 89 10:02:06 GMT
References: <8356@hoptoad.uucp> <884@cbnewsk.ATT.COM> <1345@speedy.mcnc.org>
Reply-To: jeremyr@cs.qmc.ac.uk (Jeremy Roussak)
Organization: Computer Science Dept, Queen Mary College, University of London, UK.
Lines: 20

>Graying items out seems to be most user friendly; changing the dialog box
>size (like old MacDraw did for custom rulers) to uncover new items goes
>second; hiding/showing items goes in the third position for me (even though
>I do use it occasionally).
>
>KK
>-- 
>Kris Kozminski   kk@mcnc.org
>"The party was a masquerade; the guests were all wearing their faces."


I also think that greying out irrelevant items is the most user-friendly
way to approach the problem.  However, it seems to generate a problem
of its own when applied to editText items: simply greying it out
doesn't appear to stop the user typing into it, since it doesn't remove
it from the "tabbing rota".  Mind you, I could be missing something:
I grey out by overpainting with a mid-grey (as someone recommended
not a long time ago), so I don't use any system calls.  Should I?

Jeremy Roussak