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journal: mac
What’s wrong with this screenshot?
Okay, here’s a quick one…
I decided to download Cha-Ching 0.3.1 and give it a go. It includes some new features and bug fixes, but also has some notable user interface gaffes. I plan to get more in-depth in an upcoming article, but I’ll show one grating UI flaw today.
What’s wrong with this screenshot?
I’ll give you a hint: it has absolutely nothing to do with the non-standard window style or UI widgets. I know that the purists reading this are probably yelling into their computers, “What do you mean it has nothing to do with that??”. These same purists may already have an idea of what else is wrong.
I’ll give you another moment.
Okay, ready?
The dialog is modal. I can’t move the main window. I can’t resize or minimize the main window. It’s possibly a bug, considering Cha-Ching is still in development, but I just have to ask, why? What’s wrong with a sheet, or better yet, inline editing a la OS X’s Address Book?
I know it’s still early in development, and from what I can tell from my usage of version 0.2, they’ve changed quite a bit in version 0.3. Here’s hoping the developers can get the UI sorted out before it reaches 1.0..
And maybe I’ll write a less-critical article soon. 
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4 | 4275 |
| Nick | comments | views |
thinkback
It does have a handle on the bottom right hand corner. Work in progress?
Modal dialog boxes are old school. It avoids unexpected user actions. Before object oriented programming was popular, they were more prevalent. It follows a programmer’s thought processes. I was one.
Modal does serve a purpose, no doubt. But in the context of this dialog, which is to add a transaction (an action that applications like Quicken or other data management apps either do inline or in a pane within the window), a modal dialog makes absolutely no sense to me.
| Nick | Dec. 02, 2006 | |
| 12:13 am |
1.
Modal dialog boxes are old school. It avoids unexpected user actions. Before object oriented programming was popular, they were more prevalent. It follows a programmer’s thought processes. I was one.