This is the seventh article in a series on common usability and graphical user interface related terms [part I | part II | part III | part IV | part V | part VI]. On the internet, and especially in forum discussions like we all have here on OSNews, it is almost certain that in any given discussion, someone will most likely bring up usability and GUI related terms - things like spatial memory, widgets, consistency, Fitts' Law, and more. The aim of this series is to explain these terms, learn something about their origins, and finally rate their importance in the field of usability and (graphical) user interface design. In part VII, as promised in part VI, we focus completely on CDE, the Common Desktop Environment.
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Member since:2006-07-30
Ah, I see. I'd sure appreciate it if modal dialogs weren't jumping in my face all the time :-)
But I think you've misunderstood my question about iconification.
What I want to know is, is it possible under CDE to take some of the icons from your desktop and put them into a folder and then put that folder's icon into another folder and so on.
That would open up all sorts of possibilities.
You could for example define your own start menu based on nested icons if you wanted to. Is that possible?
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2007-11-26
That would open up all sorts of possibilities.
You could for example define your own start menu based on nested icons if you wanted to. Is that possible?
Not with the minimized-application icons, but this can be done with the action "desktop objects" I referred to in my other comment. In fact, this is the way the "menu editor" that was added to Solaris CDE somewhere around Solaris 2.6 worked.
Member since:2005-12-21
You can run modal dialogs its just they just dont take over the screen and demand your attention.
Actually, CDE is one of the few systems I know of where modal dialogs _can_ do that!
It goes like this:
In Windows a modal dialog blocks the app that is running, but it does not block other apps (usually)
In OS X a modal dialog can block the app, but commonly sheets are used that only block the window of the document they are attached to (aside: I have mocked-up this sheet-type behavior for Windows too using Qt).
In CDE, the official toolkit is Motif. Motif has a MWM_SYSTEM_MODAL flag for dialogs, that literally block the entire system and nothing at all can be clicked outside of the dialog. It even changes the cursor to a 'NO access' symbol when it is moved outside the dialog's bounds. http://docs.hp.com/en/B1171-90145/ch18s02.html
That's a fact and I have written apps that have done exacly that (for special purpose kiosk/console-type software).
The good thing is that many motif apps and nearly all of the official CDE-shipped apps use modeless dialogs only and so save the user from modality disasters.
Edited 2007-11-26 06:48 UTC
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Member since:
2005-07-06
You can iconify any folder since the folder is just an instance of the file manager. So you can have many folders iconified.
You can run modal dialogs its just they just dont take over the screen and demand your attention.