Universal GUI

[Richard Gaskin]

Jan Schenkel wrote:

> Maybe it's because they were accountants *grin* but
> progressive disclosure isn't always the answer.

In all fairness to progressive disclosure, it isn't merely a case of showing
and hiding controls necessarily, but in the larger view guides where those
controls are placed to begin with.

For example, Photoshop (and sadly, most other programs since) have decided
that having every possible feature in front of the user is a good thing, but
the resulting migration from to dialogs to palettes has not reduced the
number of steps needed to perform most tasks, in some cases making tasks
harder because of the smaller target area of palette controls and the lack
of a universal way to shift keyboard focus from the document window to a
palette.  Moreover, reliance on palettes often results in a lot of visual
noise and consumes precious screen real estate that distracts from the
user's document.

In the case at hand, where the question about showing/hiding controls comes
in, we need to balance that with another cardinal principle: consistency.
Both MS and Apple HIGs suggest that having a consistent menu bar with items
that enable/disable depending on context is generally better than one in
which the menu bar is constantly changing with the context.  The MS HIG goes
further to suggest that the same principle applies to controls, and I tend
to agree for the reasons you cited, noting only that this does not
necessarily conflict with progressive disclosure.

-- 
 Richard Gaskin 
 Fourth World Media Corporation
 Developer of WebMerge: Publish any database on any Web site
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