[Am-info] Modality v. Non-modality

[Mitch Stone]

--- From a message sent by Steve Cohen on 6/15/00 10:36 AM ---

>While it's possible, nay, even probable that I am so warped by all my 
>experience that I cannot conceive something outside the box, I must say I 
>haven't got a clue as to what kind of interfaces
>Mr. Raskin would be satisfied with.  From this fragment, he is cataloguing 
>places where the current interfaces fall short and I can agree with many 
>of his points - but I find it hard to imagine how improvements along the 
>lines he suggests may be created.  Modelessness may be desirable, but 
>modality arose from a need to keep the machine's context simple enough to 
>be understood.  
>
>If we are to hope that a machine will "know" what we want to do, then we 
>must be willing to accept the fact that sometimes it is going to get in 
>the way by misintuiting what it thinks we want to do.  The annoying 
>"defaults" of Microsoft come most readily to mind.  That is not a road I'm 
>necessarily inclined to go down.
>
>I can agree, though, that too much effort is spent on getting the new user 
>up to minimum acceptable speed and not enough is done to help the 
>experienced user do things more easily.  Still, I doubt very much that a 
>return to the command line is what Raskin has in mind.

Me either. The GUI was intended to reduce dependence on modality. 
Non-modality was a key design concept behind the Macintosh, though in 
reality what resulted is more like contextual modality.

The way I understand modality, from how it is explained in Inside 
Macintosh, is that non-modal design doesn't really have anything to do 
with with the machine intuiting the operator's intentions, but rather 
permits the operator to take actions that are not subjected to a rigid, 
predetermined decision tree. The Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines 
discouraged the use of modal dialog boxes (ones that require user input 
before anything else can be done), but acknowledged that they were 
sometimes necessary (as in a Save dialog).

A related design concept is maintaining visual cues to the choices the 
operator might have within a given application, even though they might 
not be available in the current mode. This takes the form of the dimmed 
menu or menu selection. Mac applications that don't follow the guidelines 
(often Windows ports) sometimes allow the menus to vanish, move or change.

Interesting, from what I've seen of Mac OS X, the idea of non-modality is 
carried forward a step, with formerly modal dialog boxes attached to 
windows as "sheets" -- a document is clicked closed, and a sheet appears 
offering the relevant choices. The window and sheet are non-modal to the 
extent that the computer is offering the choice, but not forcing 
immediate user resolution. The entire window and sheet can be minimized 
or clicked into the background. What happens if the computer or owning 
applications are shut down with active sheets, I don't know.

 || Mitch Stone  
 << The Accidental Expert  
 || mitch@accidentalexpert.com

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