Re: It is indeed, a very sad day...

On Thu, 2002-09-26 at 09:21, Ted Clark wrote:
> Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote:
> 
> >Actually, I consider it pretty much stupid, braindead and retarded to
> >keep such a destructive button (close) in a series of small buttons
> >displayed all together and on the same side of the window.
> >
> 
> Ah, one of my favorite tangents to go off on. ;-)

this is a good tangent...and not so tangent... since cuts to the heart
of all the UI discussion that has consumed the list.  Every little
convenience feature needs to have a solid reason for being there...and
needs to be weighted against other possible elements that could be used
in the same space.  Now there is definitely a need to have some way to
close/destroy an unresponsive window via the wm's provided windowbar
menu...but what's really the rationality of a close button so
prominent.  Since well written applications tend to have their own
internal quit/close options...it doesn't seem like good etiquette to
have the wm be the preferable way to close a window.

Can anyone give me a good reason for that button to be there? A good
reason...not because someone has had it there for eons in their UI.  The
only thing I can think of is that since you typically need to close
every window you open you want it there for convenience.  But I would
think people should be encouraged to use the applications internal
toolbar-> File -> Close/Quit.  If the applications don't even typically
have the close button placed prominently in a toolbar...it seems a
little presumptuous of the window manager to have its close button so
accessible.  If it were good UI to have a close button right out there
for people to use...wouldn't application toolbars consistently do that
on their own? 

-jef

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