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FEATURE

Dealing with Dialogs in Aqua

The rules for designing dialog boxes have changed in OS X. Here's the low-down on what's different.

Issue: 1.1 (August/September 2002)
Author: Toby Rush
Author Bio: Toby Rush, a music instructor, consultant, and freelance software and web designer, has been using REALbasic since before version 1.0. His current projects include The Interface Mafia (www.interfacemafia.org) and his newborn son.
Article Description: How to make proper Aqua dialogs.
Article Length (in bytes): 10,780
Starting Page Number: 44
Article Number: 1015
Related Web Link(s):

http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macos8/HumanInterfaceToolbox/HumanInterfaceGuide/humaninterfaceguide.html

Excerpt of article text...

Aqua, the interface component of Mac OS X, obviously has a lot of differences from Platinum, its OS 9 predecessor. Some of them are obvious changes: the Dock, the Finder windows, the Apple menu. But there are quite a few more subtle things that are new, many of which are a result of some fundamental interface changes.

One place where Aqua has introduced changes is in the field of dialog boxes -- those helpful windows that appear when the application needs to communicate with the user. Dialogs designed in Platinum will almost always work perfectly when ported to Aqua, but this approach ignores a lot of design guidelines established for the new OS, and in some cases these dialogs may cause confusion for the user. Taking the extra steps to redesign the dialogs can help avoid this confusion and give your OS X application a very professional, polished look.

Some Things Never Change

Before we talk about the changes in the new interface, let's cover some of the aspects of dialog box design that apply no matter what system you're using.

Language. Text in dialog boxes should always be non-threatening and helpful. "Don't close the window until you are finished entering your preferences!" is short and to the point, but something like "Closing the window now will cause your preferences to be lost. Are you sure you want to continue?" makes the user feel less like they've made a mistake and more like the computer is helping them from doing something they didn't mean to do. Buttons should be clearly labelled, and, if the dialog is asking a question, the buttons should give possible answers to that question. This means "Yes" and "No" are often preferable to "OK" and "Cancel." Aqua interface standards appear to encourage longer texts in buttons -- like "No, don't close the window" -- than Platinum standards did.

Fonts. Dialog boxes should always use the appropriate system font -- REALbasic does this automatically if you enter "System" as the font name. To be honest, there are a couple of small changes: Aqua dialogs should use 13-point text instead of the 12-point text used in Platinum, and Aqua alert boxes (small, one- or two-line messages used for warning or alerting the user) should use the bold version of the system font. But that's it for variety: don't use a different font or size just because you think it looks good.

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