Re: graying out part of a graphic

["Paul Pehrson" <paulpehrson -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Interesting. I misunderstood your question. Now that I see what you were
asking, I want to point out that I think that you *may be* doing your users
a disservice when you include screen shots that don't look like how the
users' UI will actually look when they are performing the same operation.

Depending on the technical aptitude of your audience, some users might be
confused by having all other buttons in the documentation appear to be
inactive, when their buttons on their screen are active.

And, as was mentioned by somebody else, it is a time-intensive process that
you have to repeat every time an element in the UI changes.

Would it be better for your users to just show the button set they will be
working with and crop the rest of the buttons out of the picture? (That is a
real question; only you can answer this, because only you know your app and
your audience.)

Just a thought.

Best wishes,

Paul Pehrson
Midvale, UT

On 10/26/06, techielmb <techielmb -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote: