Am 25.07.2009 um 03:27 schrieb Graham Cox:
Display a modal progress window which tells the user's what's going on, show an indeterminate progress bar and include a "Stop" button. The worker code can wait on the alias being resolved and the main thread can keep the user informed. By using a modal progress window you've effectively "blocked" the user from doing anything but if they are not prepared to wait they have a way to abort the operation (which you have to implement of course). Just blocking without telling the user what's going on is worse than just beachballing - the beachball is after all a feedback mechanism that tells the user *something*.
Even better: DON'T use a modal progress panel. The Finder has done the exact same thing correctly, by using a modeless progress panel (I have code for that on my web site, I think, UKProgressPanel or something like that). Start that action, show progress in a progress panel (and maybe start a spinner somewhere), let the rest of the app keep running, except for maybe disabling UI elements that are blocked until that other action has finished.
This is OS X folks, we should try avoiding modality wherever possible. If your user can do other things in your app while such a process takes a while, LET THEM.
That said, make sure the user knows that you're busy and that you heard their request. E.g. if you're taking longer, detect that and bring the (modeless) progress panel to the front after 4 seconds or so. It would be kinda silly if an action that is usually immediate but occasionally takes a minute to time out always showed a modal progress panel for a split-second. Users would get epileptic seizures from the title bar flashing ;-)
Cheers, -- Uli Kusterer "The Witnesses of TeachText are everywhere..." http://www.zathras.de _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
