• Roadmap
• Projects
• Coding
  • Module Owners
  • Hacking
  • Get the Source
  • Build It
• Testing
  • Releases
  • Nightly Builds
  • Report A Problem
• Tools
  • Bugzilla
  • Tinderbox
  • Bonsai
  • LXR
• FAQs

You are here: Editor project page > Composer 5 Dialogs

Composer 5 Dialogs

Last updated 5/13/99; by Charles Manske cmanske@netscape.com)

The purpose of this document is to detail the dialogs used by Mozilla Composer, including improvements done during the "Gromit" project (now in the "MozillaClassic" tree in the CVS code repository.) This should be the basis for the new dialogs to be completed using the new XML-based dialogs in the Seamonkey project.
After thinking about these dialogs, we are investigating breaking up the more complex dialogs up into "basic" and "advanced" sets. See the Multiple use modes document for details.

We will start with a description of some characteristics common to all the dialogs of a given type.

Normal Dialogs

1. OK and Cancel buttons are usually present in a dialog and located along the bottom of the dialog. On the Mac, the placement should be Cancel, OK.
2. The OK button is usually grayed (disabled) if there is user input required to complete the action of the dialog (such as entering text in an edit field.) It is enabled after the user makes enters some valid text (something other than just whitespace) into the required editbox(es).

Multipane or Tabbed Dialogs

1. At the bottom of the outer panel, there are four buttons:OK, Cancel, Apply, and Help.
   On the Mac the order of buttons is: Help, Cancel, Apply, and OK
   Of course the Help button should only be present if help is available.
2. The Help button should bring up the help topic for the particular pane that is showing. The F1 key should bring up this same help content (standard in Windows, what about other platforms?)
3. The Apply button is initially grayed (disabled) until the user makes a change in one of the settings in any panel, then it is enabled. Switching from one panel to another should not automatically do the "Apply" actions.
4. The OK, Cancel, and Help button should always be enabled.
5. The OK button should do the same action as the Apply button, then close the dialog.
6. After the Apply button is used, all panels should execute actions needed to apply the changed settings. This action (currently) cannot be reversed while in the dialog, so the text on the OK button is changed to "Close" and the button remains enabled. Note that the action can be reversed by using Undo after the dialog is dismissed.
7. After using Apply, this button should be disabled until another setting is changed in the dialog.
8. Suggested new behavior:
   After the state described in 4 above, the Cancel button text could be changed to "Undo" so the user can undo the last Apply action without leaving the dialog. Since the new Undo system supports multiple levels, this button should be left in the "Undo" state, available to undo any previous Apply action taken while in the dialog. After using this undo feature, the button text should change back to Cancel only after there all actions applied within the dialog are undone. If this state is reached the document should be in the same exact state as when the dialog was created, thus we probably should also change the "Close" button text back to "OK."

Composer Dialogs

Click on the links to individual dialogs for screen shots and detailed descriptions of each dialog's behavior.

Dialog	Invoke	Comments	Days to Implement
Dialog	Invoke	Comments	Days to Implement
Color Picker	Color button (or "swatch") on toolbar or in Page or Table dialogs	This is really an XPFE "widget", not a dialog	3-4
Find/Replace	Edit | Find		1
Check Spelling	Tools | Check Spelling...	Newest version only implemented on Windows (new layout)	2
Personal Dictionary	Tools | Check Spelling... | Edit		1
Horizontal Line Properties	Insert | Horizontal Line, Format | Horizontal Line Properties		1
Target Properties	Insert | Target		1/2
HTML Tag	Insert | HTML Tag	Similar to "Extra HTML"  Scrolling text field	1/2
Extra HTML	Insert | Link... | Extra HTML	Scrolling text field	1/2
Remove All Character Styles	Format | Remove All Styles and the selection contains 1 or more links	Only dialog now used of the general type "Editor Hint" dialogs that could display different messages.	1
Numeric Range Error	From many property dialogs that must validate user input for an editbox or combobox	Maybe just use a generic FE_Alert type of message box?	1/2
General Page Properties	Format | Page Colors & Properties | General		1
Page Colors and Background	Format | Page Colors & Properties | Colors and Background	Tab control Complex! Page colors sample Color swatches Choose file button	2
Meta Tags Properties	Format | Page Colors & Properties | META Tags	2 scrolling lists	2
Character Properties	Format | Character Properties | Character tab	Colors swatch Font & font size popups	3
Link Properties	Format | Character Properties | Link tab	Choose file button Scrolling list	3
Paragraph Properties	Format | Character Properties | Paragraph		3
Image Properties	Insert | Image	Complex! Tab control Choose file button Buttons with icons, or dropdown menu with icons	3
Image Conversion	Insert | Image | Choose File (Select *.BMP) or paste a BMP image from the Windows clipboard.	Can bring up system file save dialog.	1
JPEG Quality	Insert | Image... | Choose File... (select .BMP file)		1/2
Loading Image	During image loading	Wait Dialog. Should pop up only if image loading time is > about 1/2 sec.	1
Table Properties	Table | Properties	Calls Choose File	3
Cell Properties	Table | Properties | Cell	Used for selected Cells, Rows, or Columns with changes to strings accomodate each type	3
Composer Preferences	Edit | Preferences | Composer	Tree widget (Prefs-wide)	1
Publishing Preferences	Edit | Preferences | Composer | Publish	Choose file button	1
New Page Color Preferences	Edit | Preferences | Composer | New Page Colors	Implemented only in UNIX versions. Color swatches Page colors sample	3

The following will be needed only if a separate Composer Application with file I/O and publishing are implemented (i.e., they are not needed for just the Ender widget):

Dialog	Invoke	Comments	Days to Implement
Dialog	Invoke	Comments	Days to Implement
Open Page	File | Open Page...	Previously shared with Navigator. Do the same	1
New Page From Template	File | New | Page from Template...		1
Publish	File | Publish	Scrolling list Combo box of document history	3
SaveChanges	File | Browse Page or Edit | HTML Source and page already exists and has changes	This is a simple "Yes, No, Cancel" message box in Windows	1/2
Save New Page	File | Browse Page or Edit | HTML Source and page has not been saved yet		1/2
Confirm Save File	File | Save or File | Save As		1/2
Saving/Publishing Page	During saving or publishing of HTML with associated files		1/2
Page Title	File | Save (new page)		1/4
SelectEditChanges	Upon returning focus to the page after editing in an external editor AND changes were also made in Composer's version after it was loaded into the other editor but before those changes were saved to disk. (Now you have two versions with new changes, each different from the file on disk so the dialog lets user decide which changes to accept)		1/2

---