RE: FrameMaker UI

[Bill Briggs <web@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 8:10 AM -0600 6/7/05, John Bell (VA) wrote:
> My favorite Frame UI oddity is the Paragraph Designer dialog. It has
> both tabs AND a drop-down menu that do the same thing.

 That's actually a species specific issue in windows (not sure about 
Solaris - it's been ages since I used FrameMaker on Unix). That 
dialog window on the Mac doesn't have both options; just the drop 
down menu, no tabs. It also responds to page down and page up which 
is what I use to change views in that dialog. No need to mouse around.


> Then there is the tab stops "Edit..." button, which opens an "Edit 
> Tab Stop" dialog. To make the UI consistent, tab settings should be 
> on a separate UI tab.

 I see what you mean, but I don't see that it would make a lot of 
difference in usability.


> Then there's the need to press Command-L to refresh the display. No
> other app I use needs to refresh its display, they handle all their
> content without getting "confused".

 This is a long-standing issue with FrameMaker. I wouldn't really 
class it as a UI issue though. It's more of an annoying shortcoming 
in performance. There was some discussion about this when Lee 
Richardson was still on the list, and the upshot was - apparently - 
that it took too much processor attention to keep it updated. I 
found, and still find it difficult to swallow that. I don't use any 
other application that requires a screen refresh. Even heavy pixel 
pushing applications manage to keep the screen written properly.

 - web

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