- From: James Graham <jg307@cam.ac.uk>
- Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2005 10:52:25 +0100
Hallvord Reiar Michaelsen Steen wrote: >On 1 Jul 2005 at 11:44, Sanghyeon Seo wrote: > > > >>Concerning recent thread about modal and modeless windows, did anyone >>mention showModalDialog already? >> >>http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/reference/methods/showmodaldialog.asp >> >>I believe this functionality does come in handy in some cases. >>Microsoft wouldn't have implemented it if there wasn't any demand? >> >> Just because there was demand doesn't mean that it was a good idea. (the demand was almost certianly from people developing desktop aopplications with HTML UIs. In this case the objections to modal windows are much less strong). > >One of the reasons why modal popup-windows are a very bad feature in >a browser is that, unlike a desktop application, you don't really >know what other pages you prevent the user from accessing by throwing >up a modal dialog. To go with the address book example from the >previous thread: I click "edit" in my fancy address book application, >a modal window pops up, I want to go to the tab where my E-mail lives >to copy the address I wanted to put in my address book and ... ouch, >can't get to the E-mail because I use an integrated browser/mail >client application and the modal dialog blocks access to all the >tabs. > > Indeed. Presumably developers would have to implement a system whereby a modal dialog was only modal with respect to the opening tab (and any other tab/window that was also opened by that tab). This would create a totally alien interaction model where clicking on a tab in the browser could focus that tab or could focus an entirely different window. -- "But if science you say still sounds too deep, Just do what Beaker does, just shrug and 'Meep!'" -- Dr. Bunsen Honeydew & Beaker of Muppet Labs
Received on Friday, 1 July 2005 02:52:25 UTC