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Subject:Re: To ellipse or not to ellipse From:Beth Mazur <mazur -at- MAYA -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 3 Jul 1997 16:04:28 -0500
At 3:07 PM -0400 7/3/97, Peter G Margaritis wrote:
>Darla Kennington <kenningt -at- t-iii -dot- com> wrote:
>> We are having a large and ridiculous debate over putting an ellipse on
>> all the buttons in our software (such as print, save, etc.) with the
>> developers of the GUI. The Windows Interface Guidelines for Software
>> Design seems to indicate you should leave the ellipse off of the
>> buttons, but always use them in menus. I agree with this, but I can't
>> get it through anyone's head.
>
>Whoa! Back the software truck up!
Seriously. All my books are packed, but I believe that an ellipsis
is indicated when a dialog box pops up to solicit additional user
input related to the given action. So some buttons and some menus may
have an ellipsis (such as Print... if the user is given a dialog to
indicate paper type, etc.) but other buttons (such as OK or Cancel) do
not as there is no further user input required for that particular action.
Beth Mazur
mazur -at- maya -dot- com (T minus one hour and counting...)
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