Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cwjcc!gatech!emory!stiatl!meo
From: meo@stiatl.UUCP (Miles O'Neal)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: When (not) to lock out other input
Message-ID: <6649@stiatl.UUCP>
Date: 25 Aug 89 15:13:31 GMT
Organization: Sales Technologies Inc., "The Procedure IS the product"
Lines: 34

Michael A. Patton writes:
| Phil@goldhill writes:
|   There are cases where the user should not be allowed to do anything except
|   respond to the popup. I have popup's that block all input in the case when
|   a malloc has failed - the popup is to notify the user that such a condition
|   has arisen and inform them that cleanup is about to occur and that a "safe"
|   state in the application is to be returned to.
|
|WRONG!  I would love to have some of my programs pop up a requestor
|when this happens and let me go off to other windows killing things
|off and then come back to the original popup and say something like
|"Retry" since now the machine may have enough memory.  Most of them
|just crash :-(.  There probably are some conditions where you HAVE to
|respond, but I still haven't heard a good example.

It depends on what type of market you are addressing. Our software has
to be user-friendly in a computer-illiterate market, and the workstation
is currently dedicated to our application (we provide a "turnkey solution").

There are times we have to make sure the user has seen the popup and
responded before they move on, or they may be in for a rude surprise.
Our software is good enough that a Kelly temp, with less than 1 day's
training, was doing what took several skilled professionals could do,
in days, whereas the old method took weeks, at least. The typical
temp worker may be bright, but is usually not X-11 or workstation-literate.

For instance, we have to make sure that when they say hit the "abort"
button, they *must* respond to the explanation/continuation query before
they do anything else. They can always hit "no" and go double check,
but at this point, it's just too unsafe to allow amodality.

With about a dozen users, we have had NO complaints about this.

-Miles