On Mon, 29 Aug 1994 21:07:03 EDT, Melinda Varian <[email protected]> said:
>I have now watched about 50 people install ADSM clients, on Windows,
>Mac, and Netware, and every single one of them has pressed Enter,
>rather than Tab, to go to the next field in the open registration
>window.  Needing to tab really isn't intuitive, and what's worse, it
>gives these users an unfriendly first impression.

I don't know about Mac and Netware, but I heartily disagree with this
about Windows.  *****ALL***** multi-field dialog boxes in MS Windows
require tab to move to the next field.  To press Enter ALWAYS closes
the window and "invokes" the action, whatever that might be.  To alter
that would go pretty strongly against the standard "look and feel" of
Windows.

>                The window shouldn't be closed and processed until
>all three fields have been entered.

That would depend on what the valid defaults are for those fields.
I'm not very familiar with ADSM, so can't say if having those fields
empty makes sense from that standpoint, but if empty fields do make
sense, then I can certainly understand the Developers position here.
I'm in the same boat with a Windows application I'm developing.
Everyone's complaining that Enter doesn't take them to the next field.
Frankly, I'm at a loss as to why this is such a problem.  No where in
Windows do multi-field dialog boxes act this way.  I just can't
understand it.  It's like these people have never used Windows before.
In my case, it doesn't make sense to have empty fields, so I can
perform those checks like you suggest and FORCE them to enter data
there.  But if the situation calls for valid empty fields, this
won't work.  And (IMO) it would be extremely confusing to REAL Windows
users to make it perform otherwise.

(Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.  This struck a little too
close to home to let it go by without comment.)

Bill
>Melinda Varian,
>Princeton University