On 9/18/07, Ted Gould <ted@...11...> wrote:
"On top" and "floating" do not sound like meaningful opposites. More importantly, this must never be something that the user chooses or even has to think of. We must take care of that and not even let the user suspect that there was any problem with that. Providing this choice would be like a builder asking, "Do you want your house with roof on top or on bottom?"
I don't think that's the case. If that's the case having an option like "docked" or "undocked" is exactly the same.
Yes, and guess what, we don't have such an option either :) Instead we allow the user to simply drag the dialog to where he wants it. We don't force him to think about what "docked" or "undocked" means (at least not without going into prefs, which is another story), and we don't couple the dialog status with some absolutely orthogonal functionality like preview. Docked or undocked, our dialogs work exactly the same.
They're all technical terms related to the condition and state of the user interface.
Yes, and there's no need to burden the user with these technical terms. If we must, due to our limitations, do some unnatural and technical thing - such as make the dialog modal - this must only come as a consequence of some _meaningful_ user choice, such as enabling or disabling preview. (Of course it must warn abundantly that enabling preview locks your editing window, e.g. by statusbar message, tooltips, etc.)
This does not leave in place the way that the dialogs currently work.
Yes, it basically turns them into always-on dialogs which can be used repeatedly without closing. I see no problem with that.
I think by default they should work in the way that they are used.
They already are changed quite a lot, and not all changes are good. I really don't like the "pin dialog" thing, as I explained. And I'm afraid the "floating/on top" choice you propose instead is not really any better.
By providing a combo box we can achieve having the dialog work in the current way. You can then turn on live preview or just having the dialog stick around. I think it's important to maintain that functionality for existing users.
If I want it to "stick around", I simply don't close it. If I don't want it to stick around, I close it. As simple as that. No need to add confusing options to the dialog itself.