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Print Dialog, pulldown menu vs. tabs
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Helsinki, Finland
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Offline
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As our term began, I once again hosted a number of 'Get to know Mac OS X' sessions for our students and staff.
They're a great way to run into various little probs in the UI's design. One particularly confusing seems to be in the Print dialog: no-one spontaneously looks for Print settings in the 'Copies and Pages'- pulldown menu.
Isn't this exactly what tabs are for? The user would get a visual cue of the available options.
I see a problem in the dialog trying to accommodate several application spesific menu items, but this is just a design challenge.
Opinions, before I mail apple a half- baked thought?
J
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Senior User
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: CT
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The only problem with tabs in this type of application is that depending on the type of printer and or the drivers being used more items can be added to that pull down list. If they were to use tabs the print window would have to get physically wider to accommodate the new options, while with a pull down the are just added to the list while not changing the size of the window. Hope I'm making sense. 
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Helsinki, Finland
Status:
Offline
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You are 
Microsoft has conveniently solved this by putting the tabs in multiple rows, whilst making sure they switch places in a seemingly random way. Let's not go there, that'd be even worse.
Maybe the extra items could just be consolidated into one tab?
J
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Posting Junkie
Join Date: May 2001
Location: Brisbane, Australia
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Originally posted by Judge_Fire:
Maybe the extra items could just be consolidated into one tab?
Called Printer Features.
Which is exactly what I have now. All the "extras" lumped in a category called "Printer Features" with it's own set of pulldown menus for each feature.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Oct 2000
Status:
Offline
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Originally posted by Judge_Fire:
You are
Microsoft has conveniently solved this by putting the tabs in multiple rows, whilst making sure they switch places in a seemingly random way. Let's not go there, that'd be even worse.
J
Isn't that so.
It's always a surprise where they end up....
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Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: Huddersfield, UK
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Whilst slightly off topic, I posted a long time ago about another improvement that could be made to the print dialog box...
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PM G4 DP 500 MHz, 768 Mb, DVD-ROM, 85 Gb, Mac OS X 10.3.9
PB G4 1.25 GHz, 512 Mb, DVD-R, 80 Gb, Mac OS X 10.4
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Helsinki, Finland
Status:
Offline
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Originally posted by - - e r i k - -:
Called Printer Features.
Which is exactly what I have now. All the "extras" lumped in a category called "Printer Features" with it's own set of pulldown menus for each feature.
I see you haven't been introduced to 'Printer features 2', yet. Our HP2500CP has atleast one extra one and I vaguely recall seeing 'Printer features 3'.
J
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Posting Junkie
Join Date: May 2001
Location: Brisbane, Australia
Status:
Offline
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Originally posted by Judge_Fire:
I see you haven't been introduced to 'Printer features 2', yet. Our HP2500CP has atleast one extra one and I vaguely recall seeing 'Printer features 3'.
J
Yeah, I have about four subcategories under Printer Features called Printer Features 1-4.
Ironically this PPD now crashes the printer dialog in the later builds 
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