Avoiding Control-Laden Dialog Boxes

The easiest thing to build in most window systems is a dialog box. The dialog box facility offers automatic tools for specifying how and where controls will be placed. The de facto definition of a dialog box is a modal window covered with controls. The ease with which developers can create user interfaces based on one control-laden dialog box after another is significant. Equally significant is the difficulty involved in creating windowing interfaces using any other visual, directly manipulated idioms. Thus most host GUI systems divide the universe of interaction into two worlds: the extremely easy to implement world of canned controls (radio buttons, check boxes, drop-down menus, and so on), and the extremely difficult-to-implement world of direct visual interaction. Consistent with this, most existing literature covers the canned-control world reasonably well, while ignoring other approaches. However, control-laden dialog boxes are not the key to successful user interface design. We'll discuss more about appropriate use of dialog boxes in Chapters 30 and 31.

AXIOM 

A multitude of control-laden dialog boxes doth not a good user interface make.

The authors are not suggesting the elimination of standard controls. However, although the use of these controls may guarantee ease-of-implementation, it won't guarantee ease-of-use. Controls must be used judiciously and in the proper context, like all elements of a good interface.

We'll now look at each of the four types of controls — imperative, selection, entry, and display — in more detail.