This is an interesting discussion and I agree with those who have stated that too few developers pay attention to good user interface design and user interface design compliance with the published standards.
I'd be curious to know how many people actually downloaded and read that document. If you don't know what I am talking about, it's available from this page: http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/docs/ (search for "Palm OS User Interface Guidelines"). To comment on some statements made: Scott wrote: > What is PalmSource's stance on this "technique"? > According to the UI guidelines, it would appear > that this is not valid. 156 * 156 (called "full-sized") is indeed valid according to the UI Guidelines. p.54 Palm OS User Interface Guidelines -------------------- begin quote ----------------- Make Modal Forms as Short as Possible Although modal forms are always the width of the screen, they are not always the height of the screen. It’s best to make the modal form shorter than the screen so that the main form, appearing below the modal form, provides context. Try to make the modal form as short as possible. Allow at least 3 pixels of space between the main form’s title bar and the top of the modal form. If the modal form obscures any portion of the main form’s title bar, make the modal form the full size of the screen. -------------------- end quote ----------------- (their definition of "full sized" is 156*156 to allow for the border). Steve wrote: > I have never seen a need for using full screen > modal forms in the almost 20 years of programming > in various languages on a variety of OSs. The > portion of the UI still visible behind the form > is a convention of GUI programming communicating > to the user that a specific choice needs to be > made before the app can continue or that an error > has occurred preventing the app from performing > a task or continuing to function. Given the size of the screen of most PalmOS devices, I don't think it is necessarily valid to apply experience with other OSs (which, I assume, were mostly for larger-screen devices) to the design of PalmOS applications. Apparently the designers of PalmOS themselves saw the need for full-sized dialogs here and there. Examples of full-size modal forms in the OS itself are the calendar and the beam dialog of the launcher. Oliver __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more http://taxes.yahoo.com/ -- For information on using the Palm Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/forums/
