Deliver Us From Scrolling
In a dialog-laden application, ensuring proper resizing behaviour can be a considerable undertaking. It becomes even more time consuming (and less fun!) if you haven’t taken resizing into consideration during initial design and layout of each form.
What’s the answer? Lock the dialogs of course!
Here I am, setting up a new “Backup Plan” with Memeo’s LifeAgent software - it came bundled with my Buffalo 500GB external drive, which I’m using for Apple’s Time Machine.
I have a 30″ monitor that I donated a kidney and a toe to pay for. Don’t force me to squint to see the most important bit of information I can think of: what files are being backed up.
What’s interesting is how simple the strategy for resizing would be! In this mockup, I expanded the original width and height by about 40%.
Label-like controls retain their initial alignments, tables consume all available horizontal width and the backup table consumes all vertical width.
Scrolling isn’t the end of the world, but it sure is a pain. Spend the extra few minutes giving your dialogs proper resizing behaviour and deliver us from this interaction.