Re: WG: Newbie question - GUI terminology
Chinell, David F (GE Indust, Security) wrote:
Sorry to quibble with your otherwise typically sage advice, but "dialog" in place of "dialog box" is not a generally accepted convention as far as I'm concerned. The MS MoS is pretty clear on this, and it's not something I've ever taken exception to.
We may be talking about different scenarios. If someone points to a dialog box and asks, "What do you call this kind of control?" the answer is "dialog box." If I'm telling someone how to change an option, I'm going to write, "On the Options dialog, click the View tab" rather than "On the Options dialog box, click the View tab." Actually, I'd probably avoid the word altogether: "1. On the Tools menu, click Options. 2. Click View."
I think if you're naming the dialog (by way of directing the user's attention to the right region of the display), the word box is just redundant clutter.
In your original message about this, you said "It's
"dialog," not "dialogue box" (by general convention)."
You have a perfect right to decide for yourself and
your company that "box" is redundant clutter and you're
not going to use it when you write. But saying that
eliminating the word "box" from the term "dialog box"
is a "general convention" is misleading. As David
pointed out, the Microsoft Manual of Style uses "dialog
box" and, for the record, so does Sun.
-- Janice
***********************************************************
Janice Gelb | The only connection Sun has with
janice -dot- gelb -at- sun -dot- com | this message is the return address.
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Follow-Ups:
- Re: WG: Newbie question - GUI terminology, Dick Margulis
References:
RE: WG: Newbie question - GUI terminology: From: Chinell, David F \(GE Indust, Security\)
Re: WG: Newbie question - GUI terminology: From: Dick Margulis
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