Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Alternatives to tabbed dialogs

Author:Avram Grumer
Posted:3/5/1999; 2:10:48 PM
Topic:DHTML MTTF!
Msg #:3679 (In response to 3571)
Prev/Next:3678 / 3680

The alternative that springs immediately to my mind is the old pull-down menu. Plenty of Mac apps have preferences dialogs that show a pull-down menu at the top, and the rest of the pane changes depending on what you select in the menu. This has many virtues: It's simple, it's easy to change from a developer point of view, it doesn't take up a whole lot of screen real estate.

I assume when you mention the solution NewsWatcher uses, you're referring to a dialog with a window on the left that contains a scrolling list of labelled icons. (That's what MT-NewsWatcher uses; I haven't used plain-old NewsWatcher for years.) This was used for the Mac Control Panel at some point, I think pre-System 7. This is pretty but has a couple of disadvantages: I find that I don't distinguish between the icons as easily as I distinguish between phrases. Also, this solution takes up more space. I think the MT-NewsWatcher prefs dialog displays maybe four icons at once, while a pull-down menu can display easily 20 or more options on a modern display. And someone's gotta design the darn icons.

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