GUI design question

[Fabian Schuiki]

Hi,

Try to solve as many cases as possible with enable/disable, for the  
other cases try to create some smooth visualization of the problem  
for the user, but avoid alert boxes as often as possible in Mac OS X.  
The idea of Aqua is to give the user immediate response whether his  
configuration of buttons and checkboxes works with other elements  
using things like enable/disable. To show/hide different elements to  
show the user what configurations are possible with which boxes  
checked or so.

The idea behind the Mac OS X defaults system is to eliminate the risk  
of setting wrong defaults for your app which makes your app crash.  
Because the defaults are stored only if the application quits  
properly, settings that crash the app are not being stored and the  
app still opens after the crash. I think the OS also asks you after a  
crash whether you want to keep your new defaults, or restore the old  
ones.

Is this all about a preferences panel or similar? If yes, have a look  
how complex apps like Photoshop solves this. Creating a System Prefs- 
like Preferences panel is quite useful in most cases – given that  
your app has many settings to adjust.

Best,
Fabian


Fabian Schuiki
fabianschuiki at bluewin.ch


Am 19.04.2007 um 09:33 schrieb Lothar Scholz:

> Hello Fabian,
>
> Wednesday, April 18, 2007, 8:43:15 AM, you wrote:
>
> FS> Hi,
>
> FS> Use Cocoa Bindings to bind the element's enable property to other
> FS> elements. Do this in a way that if the user clicks or checkes
> FS> something, the settings that would collide with that checkbox are
> FS> being deactivated (disabled).
>
> Sorry application logic is written in platform independent Eiffel
> code, Cocoa and Carbon is only under the surface.
>
> But i'm doing this already. Unfortunately enable/disable does not
> solve all cases. See my example in the next message (reply to
> I. Savant)
>
> FS> Remember that changes to the user defaults should not apply
> FS> immediately. So if you store anything in your user defaults using
> FS> NSUserDefaults, the values are being hold temporarly until the  
> app is
> FS> being quit properly,
>
> Okay this is also different from windows.
>
> FS> at which time the settings are stored. If you
> FS> show your alert box, make to have the previous defaults stored
> FS> somewhere, so that you can restore the settings that worked before
> FS> the alert appeared.
>
> So you would say that the dialog window should be closed even with
> wrong settings? On windows i never close (only if user cancels)
> the window until it contains usefull data.
>
> -- 
> Best regards,
>  Lothar                            mailto:llothar at web.de
>