RE: [ui-best-practices-working-group] Question about how to handlebest p

[John Arthorne <John_Arthorne@xxxxxxxxxx>]

The reason for displaying a message
is so the user knows what to do next. Since the Next/Finish buttons are
typically disabled at this point there is no affordance telling them how
to proceed. It is better to offer this guiding hint than to leave the user
to figure what they need to do to enable the next/finish buttons. It may
seem obvious but in complex wizards with many optional fields it's not
always clear what required field needs to be filled in to proceed.

John

Melo Márcio - qrhn86 <qrhn86@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent by: ui-best-practices-working-group-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx

12/10/2008 01:33 PM

Please respond to
User Interface Architecture Working Group        <ui-best-practices-working-group@xxxxxxxxxxx>

To	"'User Interface Architecture Working Group'" <ui-best-practices-working-group@xxxxxxxxxxx>
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Subject	RE: [ui-best-practices-working-group] Question about how to        handlebest        practice

Hi everybody,
 
In my opinion it will be strange
if a message is shown before the user type something. When the wizard appears,
just the description of the wizard page must be visible. The error message
(not info message) must appear if the user cleans the combobox value.
 
 
Best,
Márcio Guedes

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From: ui-best-practices-working-group-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ui-best-practices-working-group-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Francis Upton
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 3:20 PM
To: User Interface Architecture Working Group
Subject: Re: [ui-best-practices-working-group] Question about how to
handlebest practice
 
What I have done in this case,
is to have the message appear as it is, but just without the error icon
(when the dialog is first presented), you can use an info icon I think.
 I think the message at the top is useful.  Then if the user
does something to cause the selection to be empty, it can have the error
icon like it does now.

It's sometimes unpleasant to do all of the special handling for these cases,
and I don't know of a standard easy pattern (other than the first time
flag). :)

Francis

brian.fitzpatrick@xxxxxxxxxx
wrote: 

Hi all... 

I'm new to the mailing list and group, so I apologize if this is considered
some variety of canned "meat". :)

In DTP, we have a bug (https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=243489
) where it's been noted that a wizard starts in an error condition in some
cases. It was mentioned that Eclipse
UI guideline 5.3 (http://wiki.eclipse.org/User_Interface_Guidelines#Initialization_2)
recommends against such a thing, which does make sense.

I've included a screen shot of the wizard. You can clearly see the error
noted in the banner at the top of the wizard page.

The rationale I used for the chunk of code creating this problem is as
follows: 

1) If there's nothing to select in the combo box, the user has to perform
an action (i.e. create the object that would be listed in the combo list)
before they can continue, therefore rather than allowing the user to click
Finish and potentially create an object that would be unusable in an inconsistent
state, I block the user from doing that. 

2) If there is something to select in the combo box, we automatically select
the first item in the list, which clears the error state. 

How have other folks dealt with this case? I could see adding an error/message
label beneath the combo box that would note this state, but it would take
up real estate better used by the rest of the wizard page for custom user
interface elements. But other than that and the error message in the wizard
page banner, I'm at a loss for options. 

Any and all suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

--Fitz 

Brian Fitzpatrick
Eclipse Data Tools Platform PMC Chair
Eclipse Data Tools Platform Connectivity Team Lead
Staff Software Engineer, Sybase, Inc.

---

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You have feet in your shoes.
- Dr Seuss, Oh the Places You'll Go
 
Francis Upton IV
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Tel   510 835 3123
Fax   510 779 5226
Cell  510 432 1589
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