[IxDA Discuss] Marking required fields on desktop UIs?

[Paul Schreiber]

Alan wrote:

> I am having trouble determining if there is a standard or best
> practice for marking which fields are required on a desktop
> application form.  This is a fairly standard Windows UI with lots of
> dialogs.  Each dialog has some mandatory and some optional fields, and
> which are which tends to change with the data, system parameters, etc.
>
> Therefore, I want to have some visual treatment so users can know at a
> glance what fields are mandatory.  On the Web there is a convention to
> mark required fields with asterisks (*) but this convention does not
> seem to have been back-ported to desktop UIs.
>
> Anyone have any pointers or suggestions?

Check out the Mac OS X setup assistant. It uses red arrows quite nicely.

If you want to run it again on a Mac that has already been set up,  
delete the file /var/db/.AppleSetupDone and reboot.


Paul

          shad 96c / uw cs 2001
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