Monday, December 4, 2006 - Mon, 4 Dec 2006

The other aspect of adding a brand new window to Behold is to get all the user interface features right. Every button must be tested and must do the expected thing. The button names must be standard, or else obvious. Buttons need a letter underlined, and allow Alt-key shortcuts. The need to be enabled and disenabled at the appropriate time. A Stop button should be able to halt processing cleanly.

Edit boxes should have choices or history lists where applicable. The history lists must be programmed to update when a new entry is processed. Little details like not entering blank entries or duplicate entries, and considering same case as duplicate, and moving duplicates up when entered, need to be checked and custom programmed where necessary. Saving the lists to the Registry and getting them back again is worthwhile.

Then as I decided to add a Browse button to help select the directory wanted, I now had to repeat the process for the new window this button would bring up.

So any new window takes a few days. It’s really just grunt work that takes time to get through. I’m not even including the time for the Help about the Window, which I’m leaving until beta.

Finally, there is the question of how far to go with a new window. A Find Files window can be expanded to include every feature of Windows Explorer and more. Why that one Window can become a whole program unto itself. So I have to cut it off where it does what’s most useful to Behold right now. To me, that’s the right trade-off between features/usefulness and ease-of-use/simplicity which are two opposing goals.

As long as it works to help you find your GEDCOMs and Behold files on your computer, then its done its job.