RE: A New Keyhole Type!

What I mean is that it is not impossible (for most of those
modal dialog boxes) to make code, which does not force them
to be modal and still works just fine.  But that work should
start at the design stage. :-(  And since it wasn't for most
programs, we end up with that huge usability problem in most
programs. :-(

Attila

How much experience do you have trying to do this? Are you personally
guilt-free of using modal dialogs? What OS do you program under? Modal
dialogs are pervasive under Windows. The only program I use regularly
that uses mostly modeless dialogs is Nikon Capture for processing raw
images from Nikon digital cameras. Our own application here at Autodesk
(Inventor) also uses a lot of modeless dialogs, but they aren't the
usual case where you need an answer before it makes sense to do anything
else. In the Inventor case, you HAVE to interact with the active
document while the dialog is up. It just seems like a completely
different situation. Our Open and Save dialogs are still modal.
Unconditionally saying modal dialogs are "bad" and putting the epithet,
"keyhole," on them seems pedantically disconnected from reality to me.