- From: Matthew Thomas <mpt@myrealbox.com>
- Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2004 00:42:34 +1200
On 13 Jul, 2004, at 9:40 PM, Ian Hickson wrote: > > On Thu, 8 Jul 2004, fantasai wrote: >> >> I don't see why you're calling these sections "mutually exclusive". >> The /presentation/ of each section excludes the presentation of other >> sections, but I've yet to see an example of how the sections are >> themselves mutually exclusive. > > The example I originally had in mind when proposing the concept of > mutually exclusive sections was that of a game which had three > "screens", the first is a login page, the second is a game board view, > and the third is a high scores view. The three are mutually exclusive. A login page and a game board view would be mutually exclusive, but that's not an example that could be presented as tabs, because preventing people from navigating between tabs just by clicking on them is verboten. Conversely, you could present the game board and the high scores page as tabs, but they're not intrinsically mutually exclusive, because you could present them another way that allowed them to be visible simultaneously (as Minesweeper does, for example). In other words, Fantasai's right. That two things are shown in different tabs does not make them mutually exclusive; and that two things are mutually exclusive makes tabs an inappropriate way to present them. > I've seen wizard interfaces where the views are mutually exclusive too. > ... Assistant or "wizard" interfaces are more to do with dependency than mutual exclusivity. The existence of, and questions asked in, each page are highly dependent on what was entered in the previous pages. If that's not the case, you're just wasting people's time by making them flip through pages, and you should be using a dialog (with FIELDSETs, or tabs, or whatever) instead. -- Matthew Thomas http://mpt.net.nz/
Received on Tuesday, 13 July 2004 05:42:34 UTC