Re: A New Keyhole Type!

At 01:43 PM 8/25/2005, Hendrik Schober wrote:
>  to be modal.) OTOH, I can think of a reason to not 
>  allow the opposite: Suppose you open the "Print" 
>  dialog, and enter that you want to print page 2-7, 
>  then open the "Open" dialog and open a document 
>  with only one page. 

The same thing that would happen if you opened a one-page document, clicked
Print, then specified pages 2-7.  I don't see the problem.

But that's not the issue.  The issue is that modal dialogs are a keyhole
and, as such, we should look for alternatives, taking into account the pros
and cons of each design when coming to a decision.  Rather than talk about
Print dialogs and what could or could not be (thus risking being blinded by
what we are used to), I think a better example is the bookmark management
window, which is modal under IE6 and modeless under Firefox.  Now that we
know that both are possible, we are in a better position to reason about
their relative merits.

Scott