Author Topic: An indication for what will be applied when pressing 'Enter'  (Read 2969 times)

Zak

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Maybe something like when you have changed a setting, 'Apply' gets 'un-greyed-out'™, and a 'Cancel' button appears?

It's considered bad UI behaviour to have buttons that affect the state of a dialog box appearing and disappearing.
In this case, that should be a button labeled Revert or Reset which is enabled only when a setting has changed. Your other programs in the screenshot have this.

Also see my previous reply about why MusicBee's Preferences dialog being non-modal confuses the matter somewhat with regard to Apply and Close buttons.


It may help to know how many people actually use the Apply button on the Preferences dialog to make adjustments on the fly.
I must spend as much time tinkering in that screen as anyone else, but I never use it that way.
If no one would miss it, making it modal and just having OK and Cancel buttons would remove any confusion.
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hiccup

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Maybe something like when you have changed a setting, 'Apply' gets 'un-greyed-out'™, and a 'Cancel' button appears?

It's considered bad UI behaviour to have buttons that affect the state of a dialog box appearing and disappearing.

I am not an avid smartphone user, but is that still the case these days?
I can imagine for small screens, dynamic buttons are a blessing, and people will appreciate them and get used to them easily?
Aren't they becoming more common, and maybe even considered good practice in some cases?

Quote
It may help to know how many people actually use the Apply button on the Preferences dialog to make adjustments on the fly.
I must spend as much time tinkering in that screen as anyone else, but I never use it that way.
If no one would miss it, making it modal and just having OK and Cancel buttons would remove any confusion.

I use 'Apply' myself regularly. But if I pick my brain as to why, it's probably some nervous tick so the be sure that my changes are saved, because I am not confident enough about the following 'Save' and 'Close' buttons.

Zak

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It's considered bad UI behaviour to have buttons that affect the state of a dialog box appearing and disappearing.

I am not an avid smartphone user, but is that still the case these days?
I can imagine for small screens, dynamic buttons are a blessing, and people will appreciate them and get used to them easily?
Aren't they becoming more common, and maybe even considered good practice in some cases?
Sorry, was talking about desktop apps only. Mobile apps definitely have their own rules, required by the lack of an on screen cursor and the limited screen real estate.


In other news, it seems Apple is okay with dialogs having both Apply and Cancel buttons:

Make sure a Cancel button undoes all applied changes. A Cancel button should never silently commit changes the user previewed by clicking Apply.

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/macos/windows-and-views/dialogs/


Still seems confusing to me, but I'm not a Mac user, so I'm not sure how many programs actually design their dialog boxes that way.
Bee excellent to each other...