Universal GUI

[Dan Shafer]

On Monday, July 28, 2003, at 09:01 AM, Jan Schenkel wrote:

> Now we've settled on a design where the user sees all
> the fields and option menus and checkboxes, but
> they're all disabled until the user enters 'Edit' mode
> by clicking the 'Edit button', then they're enabled
> until the user clicks the 'Save' or 'Revert' buttons.
> During edit mode, other buttons such as Previous and
> Next are disabled.
>
IMNSHO, this is just fine. (Not that you -- or anyone else for that 
matter -- really ought to care what I think!)

This is a case of mode-based interfaces. While I generally do not like 
such interfaces, this is one of the clear exceptions. As a use, I 
*view* the data in one mode and then switch to *edit* mode to make 
changes.

I presume since you guys have been at this for a while that there's a 
sound reason the user might want *not* to be in editing mode (or that 
your program wants him not in that mode). Otherwise, I'd eliminate the 
"uneditable" view and just put the user in a position to both view and 
edit the content in the same screen/layout. I've very rarely found a 
reasons to do modal programming after thinking about the situation for 
a bit, but I'm sure valid situations exist.