Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ginosko!usc!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!ics!david
From: david@ics.COM (David B. Lewis)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: When (not) to lock out other input
Summary: modal dialog boxes
Message-ID: <2676@ics.COM>
Date: 26 Aug 89 14:35:07 GMT
References: <6649@stiatl.UUCP>
Organization: Integrated Computer Solutions, Inc., Cambridge MA
Lines: 35

In article <6649@stiatl.UUCP>, meo@stiatl.UUCP (Miles O'Neal) writes:
< Michael A. Patton writes:
< | Phil@goldhill writes:
< | 	<support of modal poups>
< |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

Yes!

< 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.

The analogy isn't quite appropriate: the former involves the whole system,
the latter only the application. In the first case, it isn't really possible
for the person to "go off and double-check"; the application is dead
by then. The use is more justifiable in the second, local to the application.

I regard modal dialogs as a best to avoid in general because most programmers 
do not handle them as discreetly as Miles describes. I am willing to trade away
appropriate uses to save on general frustration.

One particular example of abuse of modal dialogs stays in my mind: 
I had entered a fair amount of text into a (beta) WYSIWYG editor and then
decided to change the font to a font which turned out not to exist -- as
I was informed by a dialog box which repeatedly came up needing input, once 
for every character in the document.
-- 
David B. Lewis david@ics.com ics!david@buita.bu.edu david%ics.UUCP@buita.bu.edu
"There are five stages of fame: denial, anger, negotiation, acceptance, and 
death. These stages are virtually the same as the five stages of terminal
illness." -Nora Ephron